From the Fresno Business Journal:

You probably have seen them before, and you may have even squished them underfoot, getting a noseful of unpleasantness in return.

Stink bugs are appropriately named for their defense mechanism, when they feel threatened, of emitting a noxious blast of odor.

Native stink bugs don’t pose a great threat to local farmers because they have natural predators. Yet an invasive species that has wreaked havoc on some mid-Atlantic fruit orchards appears to be flitting toward the Golden State’s breadbasket.

“It’s spreading pretty rapidly,” said Walt Bentley, an entomologist with the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management Program. “Last year it seemed to have one of those population explosions.”

Bentley, based at UC’s Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier, said the pest from Southeast Asia was likely introduced to the United States in 1996 through shipping crates, was officially collected in Pennsylvania two years later and properly identified in 2001.

For more, see: Stink bugs pose noxious challenge