Project authors: Sasha Jamal, Valeria Herreros, Tahmid Chowdhury, Kayleen Mercedes, Aia Roshdi
Spotted Lanternflies (SLF) have quickly become an emerging invasive species in North America during the past couple of years. Because of the immense damage that lanternflies can cause, our group becomes curious about the seasonal population of lanternflies. We used iNaturalist to gather numerical data on the population of SLF in New York ranging from January 2020 to December 2021. We also used the same method to gather pigeon data, another invasive species in New York, as a comparative baseline for our observations. Our research found that SLF are observed most during the summer seasons, and found that Manhattan overall has the most observations of the species. Our data on pigeons were proven to be relatively constant, verifying that SLF has a significant seasonal population variation.
