Laura Sullivan-Beckers, who first discovered the new treehopper species in her backyard garden bed in Murray, is using the crowdsourcing website iNaturalist.org to determine how widely dispersed the insect is.
Winter creeper starts out climbing trees as a small innocuous vine much like ivy will do. But it grows and climbs, quickly forming thick rope-like vines that deprive a tree of nutrients and sunlight.
The LBL BioBlitz is a citizens' science project in which community members document flora and fauna found in Land Between the Lakes via the iNaturalist app.
Before it took over Southern landscapes, the invasive vine was once called the “savior of the South.” Now artists, designers and chefs are trying to render it useful.
