Exacerbating the problem is our love of huge lawns. Japanese beetle larvae develop primarily on grass roots. With up to 40 million acres of North America covered in lawns (Milesi et al. 2005), there is no shortage of food for the beetles’ young. Every year billions of adults emerge from our lawns to skeletonize our plants. One obvious way to fight this scourge is to limit the amount of food we provide for these little buggers: reduce the size of your lawn!
