This science truthful winner came upon if important oils preserve noticed lanternflies away [video] | Residence & Backyard

Tea tree oil can keep mosquitoes, lice, and other insects away.

Can it work to hold back spotted lantern flies?

Annie Galen pursued this big question. Her research on the use of essential oils as deterrents won third place in the Plant Science category of the senior category at the North Museum Science and Engineering Fair.

Spotted lantern flies are so common at Ephrata High School that the field hockey scavenger hunt asked the team to find one and crush one, says Annie, now a senior and field hockey player.

“I thought it would be interesting if I could do some research on this to see if there was a natural deterrent,” she says.

Annie, 17, rated tea tree oil for its insect repellent properties and lavender oil, which has antimicrobial benefits. She also picked these two oils because they are easy for people to find.

Before starting her research, she expected the tea tree oil to keep lantern flies away because of its use as an insect repellent.

For her research, Annie looked beyond her Clay Township home for spotted lantern fly host trees. (She lives with parents Donya and Scott, the headmaster, while older sister Hannah is in college.)

Annie found six maples and taped them around them. Every two days she sprayed the bark of two trees with lavender oil, two trees with tea tree oil, and two trees with water as control trees. Weekly she removed the tape and counted the lantern flies.

After adjusting to the girth of the trees, she had her results on whether the oils kept lantern flies away.

“In the end, they weren’t really a big deterrent, so it’s kind of sad,” she says.

Lavender oil attracted more lantern flies than trees without oil.

“It didn’t prove my hypothesis at all, but it’s actually telling because I thought you could use lavender oil as an attractant on the outskirts of your property to try to remove it from your trees,” says Annie.

Or it could help attract lantern flies to traps, she adds.

This research brought Annie’s attention to spotted lantern flies.

“They could really be a big problem and we have to do something to stop them,” she says.

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