At a Maryland vineyard, Debi Persing guided her Boston terrier, Xephyr, slowly down a row of grapevines.
Vineyard workers and scientists had already identified several invasive spotted lanternfly egg masses hidden among the vines. They believed they had found them all.
Then Xephyr stopped at a vine they had marked clear. The little dog sat and pawed at the plant insistently.
When researchers checked more closely, they found the egg masses Xephyr had detected but trained experts missed.
"She was adamant," Persing said. "She's a machine at finding odor."
Xephyr's search was part of a new study from Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences that pitted ordinary pets, trained by their owners, against experienced human searchers in a hunt for spotted lanternfly egg masses. It was the first test of community dog-handler teams in real-world conditions, where egg masses occur naturally, scents compete, and target locations are unknown.
The dogs outperformed the people by more than 2 to 1 in densely vegetated areas.
"What this means is that we can turn to everyday dogs and their owners and train them as a flexible early detection force," said Erica Feuerbacher , the study's lead researcher and professor in the School of Animal Sciences . "In places where the spotted lanternfly hasn't reached yet, teams could train in advance and be ready to detect it before it becomes a major infestation."
Sniffing out an invasive pest
The spotted lanternfly has spread to 19 states, threatening vineyards, orchards, and forests. Finding the insect's eggs early is one of the best ways to slow its spread, but they are difficult to spot and professional detection dog teams are in short supply.
To test whether dogs and their owners could help fill that gap, Feuerbacher and co-author Sally Dickinson partnered with Virginia Tech grape disease pathologist Mizuho Nita and Texas Tech University researchers. Their 2025 study showed that trained pets could reliably detect spotted lanternfly egg masses in controlled settings.
This time, the team asked: Could the dogs do it in the real world?
"It's one thing to show dogs can do this in training exercises," Dickinson said. "It's another to put them out in the environment, where there are lots of other odors and distractions, and see that they can still perform."
Researchers first evaluated 26 dog-handler teams in distance-testing exercises. Then nine teams were sent to search half-acre areas where egg mass locations were unknown.
Trained human searchers, including plant disease specialists, went in first. Dog teams followed. Each search lasted 10 minutes.
At a heavily vegetated site, dogs found an average of three egg-mass locations each, compared with 1.3 for each human searcher.
Researchers also tested how close dogs needed to be to reliably find egg masses. Dogs performed best when egg masses were within about 16 feet of the search path, and detections dropped to zero beyond 50 feet.
"The distance testing helps us understand how these dogs need to be deployed," Feuerbacher said. "Handlers need to move methodically through an area, so dogs stay close enough to detect the odor."
The study also found that dogs trained on non-living egg masses could recognize live ones in the field, which means new detection teams can train without risking the accidental spread of the invasive pest.
Beyond spotted lanternfly
The researchers now want to know whether dog-handler teams could help sniff out other agricultural threats, including plant diseases. They will investigate whether dogs and their owners can help detect Pierce's disease, a bacterial infection that can damage and kill grapevines.
"As we face more environmental issues, more agricultural issues — hitchhiker insects, invasive species, diseases — having a widespread network of trained dogs is exciting," Feuerbacher said. "It really opens people's eyes to what their dogs are capable of. Your dog, regardless of its breed, could do this."
Xephyr, now 12, still enjoys scent training several times a week. Persing said she'd jump at the chance to search for spotted lanternfly again.
"I guess sometimes the nose is more important than the eyes," she said. "She's my best girl."
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
