This shows that the origin of U.S. and Japan lanternflies both are from South Korea, which suggests another spread pattern: China --> South Korea --> Japan & U.S. This suggests that the spotted lanternflies in China only invaded South Korea, and South Korean spotted lanternflies were more invasive, targeting two other countries.

How the flies spread between Korea, Japan, and China is easier to reveal as the three countries are in close proximity of one another. However, the author points out that the key point "how" is missing -- exactly "how" did the spotted lanternflies go across the ocean? If this article does not give us that information, this is definitely an area of research that either needs to be conducted or something that I need to find more sources on.

Term definition to understand paper better: phylogeographic patterns show the geographic arrangement of genetic variation within and between species. This helps identify evolutionary history and physical landscapes shape DNA.

This answers my former question -- U.S. and Chinese spotted lanternflies can share the most recent common ancestor if some populations of spotted lanternflies were directly introduced from China to the U.S. without a South Korean bridge. This is an important point I want to remember for my research, since it shows that the U.S. spotted lanternflies didn't all come from South Korea (which is the common thought shared amongst people).

This matches Meng's (other source) claim that South Korea is the source of spotted lanternflies in the United States. This again highlights the concept that South Korea is a "bridge" between the two countries. This does bring up the question on why U.S. and Chinese spotted lanternflies had the most recent common ancestors, when South Korea is in the middle of their relationship.

The data suggests that U.S. and urban Shanghai spotted lanternflies are closely related. I want to highlight this because it points out the fact that China is the source of the lanternflies that invaded the U.S. The data itself doesn't show any connections to the lanternflies from South Korea, even though the introduction suggests that South Korea was the bridge for lanternflies entering the U.S. If that is true, shouldn't U.S. flies share a more recent common ancestors with Korean flies? Or, since the invasion of the species happened in a short amount of time, did the populations not have enough time to diverge? I am curious to see if South Korea would fit into this diagram at all.

Here, the author suggests that South Korea was invaded by Chinese spotted lanternflies, and that the United States was invaded by spotted lanternflies from Korea. This would be a China --> South Korea --> U.S. introduction in that respective order.

The origin of the spotted lanternfly is China and South Asia, meaning that any of the spotted lanternflies we see elsewhere must have come from China in one way or another.