[Truth666]

-- October 2002 Where did this new army come from?
Most believe the glassy-winged sharpshooter was accidentally introduced to Southern California as eggs on nursery stock. It was first noted in Ventura County in 1990. The growing region of Temecula, in northern San Diego county, noticed a problem back in 1996. By 1997, the damage was spreading like wildfire, and by August of 2000, between $12 and $14 billion of Temecula grapevines had been wiped out.
The glassy-winged sharpshooter has also been spotted in Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Orange, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Kern and Tulare Counties, making its way into California's Central Valley. There is no reason to believe it won't eventually start showing up in the more vineyard-laden Northern California counties of Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino.
http://www.goosecross.com/corner/sharpshooter.html

[megatherium]

A colleague of mine where I teach does research on leaf-hoppers, including the glassy-winged sharpshooter. Interesting insects. He told me that one-third of the US corn crop was destroyed in the late 1960s by one species of them. They are close relatives of the cicada. Like the cicada, they call to attract mates, but unlike the cicada, they transmit their calls through plant stems instead of through the air. My colleague uses a special laser device to detect and amplify their sounds (the device is similar to what spies use to listen to conversations behind windows in foreign embassies). The calls are complex and eerie.