Begone Spotted Lanternfly

Elevating awareness of the Spotted Lanternfly, an invasive species currently spreading across the East Coast causing and severe environmental and economic damages, and how to mitigate it.

Comment

Inspiration

This project was inspired by the necessity for increasing public knowledge of the spotted lantern fly, an invasive species of insect indigenous to China and Vietnam and which which is rapidly spreading across the US East Coast. Its feeding behavior causes damage to local plants, causing wilting and dieback, and its excretion of honeydew sugar leads to the growth of sooty mold that blocks sunlight from reaching plants. Grape, black walnut, maple, and black cherry trees are active targets for these pests, leading to negative effects on the agriculture industry and human life broadly.

Two of our members had a personal connection to this topic and wanted this project to highlight the spotted lanternfly as ecologists and haters of the spotted lanternflys' spread across the USA. As computer scientists, data scientists, chemists, CAMs majors, and biologists, we wanted an end product that aligned with our skill sets and encouraged a positive social change for conservation, which all starts with awareness.

Knowledge of the meaning of an "invasive species" is not as common knowledge as one may hope. Our team learned about the impact of such species and other ecological concepts throughout this hackathon thanks to help from our teammates and online resources. Even though ecology impacts other major human activities-- like economics, food, and general quality of life-- it is a field that deserves more recognition than some American education systems give it. Access to environmental science research is something that needs to improve considering the weight the environment holds on all of our lives. With this project, we hope to spread awareness of the spotted lanternflys impact and empower people to learn more about the environment and be stewards of environmental good. Even if it means squashing some bugs.

What it does

The accompanying bug squashing game is meant to give users a supplemental edutainment experience that may draw them in to learn more about the SLF (Spotted Lanternfly) if they haven't experienced the map already. The game also provides a fun outlet for the admittedly grim topic of invasive species and their environmental impact.

The goal of the game is to squish as many bugs as possible. Unfortunately, like real life, squishing these bugs isn't enough! The more you squish, the faster they will appear. Eventually, if too many bugs appear, the game will end. This is meant to resemble how invasive species can push habitats beyond their ecological threshold and into an alternative state they are not able to recover from, such as extirpating (driving locally extinct) plant species that the Spotted Lanternfly targets in an area. The absence of these producers could mean multiple things, including loss of habitat for native plant and animal species (leading to a trophic cascade) and loss of crop yield for local farmers. The impact of the SLF is not something limited to nature lovers, and we hope that this project can illuminate that for people. So while you are increasing your bug-crushing score, we hope you consider the ways to mitigate SLF spread. After all, it all starts with awareness.

How we built it

The game aspect is built in Python with the Pygame module. Elena outlined the game concepts on a whiteboard and then learned PyGame to implement it. The aesthetic choices for the game are meant to emulate Flash games, specifically collage style point-and-click games. Fun fact: the hand used for the Squash Game is one of our dev's hands!

Challenges we ran into

Learning how to analyze data and construct a website to display and visualize the data was not something everyone on the team found easy to pick up and collaborate with a large team on. Because of this, part of our team pivoted to create an educational game about squashing the Spotted Lanternfly. Learning PyGame for that was also a challenge, but we got there.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Learning PyGame! And being able to go with the flow of development. When your working with a team of four that (mostly) just met at this event, it can be hard to get communication down. But once we did, the flow of teamwork was amazing!

What we learned

Sometimes, a hard pivot is effective. The best idea isn't always the first one, and sometimes, you have to examine your own skill set and see where they match up with the team (not just vice versa).

Our team also learned about important ecological concepts, such as: invasive species, trophic cascade, habitat loss.

What's next for Bye Bye Spotted Lanternfly

The visualizations have a lot of places for improvement! Same with the Vercel implementation of the project, which cause some tech issues we were not able to resolve by time of submission.

For the mini games, we have a few ideas! Embedding the Python game onto the website would be ideal! Then anyone can play it right after interacting with the visualization. Aesthetic improvements to the Spotted Lanternfly game is also a goal. We had additional mini-game ideas, but weren't able to implement them in time. Things like: spotted lanternfly egg removal, spotted lanternfly stomp, and a minigame where YOU play as the invasive species and wreak havoc on native species! We'd also like to add proper infographics to the minigame as well, so people can get a better view of what these mini games represent without having the dev team there to explain it.

Also,

Built With

Share this project:

Updates