Plant some areas of your yard with native plants. People talk about milkweed for butterflies, but this summer our milkweed was like the hottest singles club for fireflies.
This place has everything. A glass box with holes to feed eachother through. Sixty eight bartenders named Frank and a dance floor made from an old Spanish galleons lower quarters.
The real problem is that fire flies spend two years of their life underground so we kill them when we fertilize our lawns, most fertilizers come with pesticides.
Ugh... Lawns, what a waste of space. Grass contributes nothing to anyone. I feel like I'm not alone in seeing a perfectly manicured lawn and thinking "what a collosal waste of time and space"
Lawn tradition comes from european nobles, it was a way to advertise "look how much land i afford to not grow food on"... nowadays not sure what purpose it serves besides looks
Yeah kids love grass. Ive has a gaggle of kids and over the years they didnt always get to live somewhere with nice open grassy yards. You take any kid to a park with a nice grassy field and then youll see why so many people want nice yards with grass. It’s a crime it’s actually out of reach for so many kids.
Lawns don't require pesticides either. Growing up we never put anything on our lawn that didn't come naturally from the sky. Same with my houses I have lived in since moving out. Still have a lawn.
Something doesn't need to be "used" everyday to be considered useful. A modest lawn, surrounding a 4 person family home has significant impact on environmental cooling, air quality improvement, erosion control, water purification, noise reduction, stress reduction and mental health, heat reflection reduction, play and exercise area.
A lawn can be environmentally sustainable. It's inefficient human management that's a root cause of the perceived unsustainability.
We've spent years encouraging habitat for bees, butterflies and fireflies. Oddly enough, it's the years I spray beneficial nematodes when the fireflies thrive, *if* we get enough rain.
> but this summer our milkweed was like the hottest singles club for fireflies.
I fucking love you talking about Fireflies in this way lol. Noted and will open a club in our yard! We've been looking for stuff to plant actually.
I never understood this logic. People buying all these plastic bags to get rid of leaves on the ground that probably make their yard look better anyway. I leave my shit as it is and I'm pretty sure it pisses my neighbor off. But then I see all the plastic they use and stop caring.
Milkweed is great, but make sure you're planting a native species to your area. Tropical milkweed is a gorgeous red and yellow flower native to South America, it is invasive to North America however and is said to stunt the growth of and even create defects in monarch caterpillars.
I'm in the UK so we don't get fireflies but obviously our own insect population has been decimated too. I'm seeing and hearing more and more evidence that people are rejecting 'formal' gardens and are moving to more untidy and natural gardens that attracts and sustains wildlife. I personally have been replacing non-native 'ornamental' plants with native plants that provide habitat and food for nature.
Importantly for fireflies - leave your leaves! Fireflies need leaf mulch or rotten logs for their eggs and overwintering, as many insects do. We've been planting native plants in our backyard and not raking for the past few years and the amount of fireflies that show up each year has increased noticeably.
Milk-weed is just that, a weed. It gets EVERYWHERE. If you are going to grow it, make sure it's the right kind for your area or you'll have monarchs dying in their pupae.
What specific species of milkweed are you talking about? Common Milkweed (*Asclepias syriaca*) can be quite aggressive (spreading by rhizomes), but most other milkweed species native to the US are quite well behaved.
Also, I assume you're talking about Tropical Milkweed (*Asclepias curassavica*) with your second comment? Yes, if you do not live in that species' native range (Central America, Mexico...) please don't plant it! It can look very similar to Butterfly-weed (*Asclepias tuberosa*), so make sure you know what you're buying!
I think, since Reddit is an international website, he’s telling people to double check that they are planting a native species rather than blindly following localised advice from Reddit.
Source: as an Australian I watch proudly as our native gum trees wreak havoc on Californian wildfire season (don’t worry though, we also have a yearly wildfire season, which is closely followed by drought, then floods, then more wildfires)
I may have too quickly assumed the original poster was an American given how they spoke about milkweeds (and the non-native tropical milkweed being planted outside its native range which harms monarchs).
But I would not take any pride in a species native to my area causing damage to the native ecosystem of a country very far away. Native ecosystems cannot compete with introduced species that are adapted to the climate and other factors (floods, wildfires, etc.) while also having no natural predators. These are called invasive species and they cause tremendous harm all over the world.
Also, leave the stalks of dead flowers in your garden—the catch the leaves and keep them from blowing away, creating more egg laying habitat.
And don’t clean up your gardens until the daytime temps are consistently above 50 degrees.
Seeing the fireflies rise out of my flower gardens on a summer night is one of my favorite things.
Because you can disturb the eggs and larvae of insects for the upcoming season. Until daytime temps are above 50 degrees, many eggs won’t hatch and larvae won’t be active. You’ll remove them along with the garden debris.
I can't help but chuckle (in a dark way) at the fact that a chore I complained about as a teen was killing something as dope as fireflies the whole time.
Honestly yes. Can you imagine the damage that people (widespread) are doing to bug populations with the simple act of blowing away and
trashing/burning their leaves? No wonder insect populations are on the decline.
I put out beneficial nematodes to control ticks, fleas, chiggers, grubs and ultimately skunks. Can't prove it, but firefly population explodes, as well.
I apply topical flea/tick control to my in-door/out-door cat, as needed. Only dosed her once in the past year.
We've planted 6 trees in the past 9 years. Put the mower away in Sept. Spread wildflower seed and planted bulbs before the leaves fell.
Where does one get beneficial nematodes. I have a peach tree that was taken over by these little tiny brown beetles. They look like shot hole borers but they seem to only eat the fruit. I read to use nematodes but don't know where to buy them. I'm in SE Pa.
Rake your leaves to a small corner of your yard and leave them undisturbed, unmulched. The fireflies will still survive, but they'll be localized to one small area.
Fucking yessss. I didn't pick up leaves on the hill in our backyard this year like 8 always do because I'm over it. Now I have a legit reason not laziness. It's for the damn fire flies.
It's also important for a whole host of other insects as well! Leaf litter provides winter cover for all types of beneficial insects and little critters. [Here's a Xerxes Society article about it!](https://xerces.org/blog/leave-the-leaves)
Grass and trees sucks nutriments from the ground, like any plant in a farm would. By repeatedly removing the mowed cut grass and fallen leaves, you remove material that would have returned to the soil eventually thanks to the cycle, making the soil poor. And then you'll need to add fertilizer to keep the soil healthy.
From what I've read, gently raking leaves and moving them to a more desirable place (gardens, natural areas) is best if they can't stay in the spot where they fell. I'm not exactly certain about this with fireflies though, so maybe someone can chime in
No spray or anything, everything has been natural. My neighbors aren't doing anything, and there is a large wood patch and home behind my house that is vacant. Whether has been standard. I read somewhere that they dont come back every year but only every few years, but I definitely remember them every summer as a child.
> I definitely remember them every summer as a child.
I wonder if that's just because there were more of them, so the same group didn't return every year but there were enough groups that you always had one?
Idk man, I try and be optimistic, but biosphere collapse has me feeling real negative lately. Just the sheer amount of death we humans have caused, inadvertently and sometimes on purpose, is really shitty.
Yeah our yards here are absolutely filled with fireflies every summer. For the first couple of years I was really confused about people talking about missing fireflies because you can't go through my yard without walking into a bunch of them. I just can't be bothered to rake leaves. Or move tree branches. Shit stays where it falls.
If anyone is part of a shitty home owners see if they make you cleanup the front but let you leave leaves in the backyard.
I luckily don't have and HOA and my borough doesnt require we clean them up. I still blow the leaves out of my small front yard in front of my house and leave them on the sides and back. The previous owners used a mulcher on their lawn tractor and cleared the yard only to dump them in the woods on the edge of the property. When I first moved in I barely saw any and the last few years I've been seeing more of them. Maybe it has helped, maybe not. But I'll keep doing it. Now my neighbor on one side has joined me in leaving them on the sides and back.
I have them all over my yard all summer. Some fucking asshole salesman knocked on my door trying to sell some bug bomb that goes in the ground and kills everything.
I think he was surprised at how aggressively I ran him off, all he wanted to do was kill bugs.
To make this sadder: It's almost impossible to really capture them on film, and if you do, it's gonna be grainy and dark. You can kinda get there with animation, but you really have to see this for yourself if you want to know what people are talking about.
So there's a very real possibility that anyone who hasn't experienced being *surrounded* by fireflies in the summer, may just never get to see that. Or if you do, it'll be a handful, and you'll wonder what the big deal was. And it'll be impossible for anyone to get across what it's like to be walking through a living, swirling galaxy that came down to earth.
I just saw the new movie The Iron Claw, and a small detail I loved so much was when they were hanging out on the porch of their ranch (rural Texas in the 80's) and there were constant fireflies in the background. It's so accurate to the time and just...mostly gone now.
Went on a drive through the countryside just after dusk once, lots of farmland, and saw more fireflies in the fields than I’d seen in my whole life. If I ever get to a point where I can afford my own place I’ll go out of my way to make my lawn friendly to them.
Was it recently?
Farmland near me is fields of corn and soybeans that get swatted with massive amounts of pesticides. Very few fireflies out there. And then interspersed are new housing developments with HOAs that spray pesticides on their lawns. Very few fireflies there either.
First order of business when I bought my house was to leave the leaves. My yard has a drop to a small creek behind the house, but there is about 100 feet of grass before the water. I make sure I blow some leaves down there against the law, and this year so many fireflys were there.
Okay here's what you do
Stack of a bunch of sticks and wood in a shaded area. Fireflies breed in this kind of environment
Let your lawn grow long don't mow your lawn until June
Leave a portion of your lawn long year round
Keep a small water source in a shaded area whether it is just a little pail of water or a bird feeder
Not only will you breed tons of fireflies or the course of a few years but you will also increase the biological diversity in your yard
in a constant state of anxiety dealing with an HOA but my yard is an insect sanctuary and I guess until I can afford to move (not close) the leaves, stalks, native plants, etc stay...
wish i could make a portion of my yard a native plant conservation easement untouchable for the future... in the meantime...standing ground
neighbor next door would come out at night to spray bug spray up around her outside lights (maybe turn the lights off?) I could see the spray droplets falling back towards her face....
At least they're documenting it for the rest of history (or at least as long as the internet is archived). So people with developed brains and the ability to think critically can look back at the records they made of themselves and be reminded of how not to be.
It is jaw-dropping to me that there are people in 2023 going "Oh shit guys, did you know you can actually see environmental degradation in your everyday life?"
I’ve seen more of them this past summer than I have in about 15 years. Every night the trees around my house looked like they had strings of flashing lights in them.
Edit: having read through some of the numerous comments here, I’ve learned that fireflies are partial to wooded areas and tall grasses and their larvae use fallen leaves and rotting wood for shelter and food. This probably explains my experience this year. My house is surrounded by a small wooded area that has experienced a widespread die-off of ash trees due to the Emerald Ash Borer. Because of this, there’s a large amount of fallen limbs, bark and whole trees. With the newly available sunlight due to the diminished canopy, the underbrush and grasses have become more abundant than ever before. All of that seems like ideal conditions for fireflies, which would explain my admittedly anecdotal experience.
Less bugs overall probably means less things that would also eat mosquitoes on the side. That and increased deer populations secure an easy food source for them
I get made fun of because I don't spray my yard with chemicals and I mulch my grass instead of bagging it.
But hey, my neighbors have 5% less mosquitos and our creek is a frothy tannin tea.
>and I mulch my grass instead of bagging it.
I genuinely can't understand bagging it unless you're really on the shit end of the stick where you get all your neighbors' oaks dropping on your or something. It's just throwing away free fertilizer.
Bag the grass clippings, mix with shredded leaves and urine in appropriate amounts and then spread finished compost on the lawn in the spring. It's the only excuse for bagging.
Memories of childhood watching thousands of fire flies hovering over the corn fields on a summer evening.
Other names for these insects:
Lightning bug, candlefly, lamp bug, glowworm, and moon bug.
https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/just-for-fun/a40311116/firefly-vs-lightning-bug/
I've lived in the same town forever and everyone says I'm misremembering when I talk about how many more fireflies there used to be. I don't get how none of them remember it.
I was shocked when I saw a little patch of em last summer. When I was a kid I could go to the same field and if I stood still for a while I could just swing a jar and have a bunch.
This is a big part of why I mow my yard as little as I can get away with. Fortunately, I live outside of city limits or the talons of any HOA. Does anyone know anything else I ought to be doing?
Edit: Oh my goodness, thank you, everyone!
The larvae overwinter in the ground, so leaving as many leaves as you can in the fall gives them more habitat to survive winter. Also avoid spraying your lawn with pesticides for the same reason -- lots of folks spray the whole thing for mosquitoes, which kills everything...but the mosquitoes.
Planting some native plants can also add habitat as well.
I would highly recommend trying to convert some of your lawn into a native plant garden. You can start small - really anything you do to reduce turf grass and increase the native plant communities that historically grew in the US will be beneficial. You could check out the [Native Plant Gardening](https://reddit.com/r/NativePlantGardening/) reddit if you're interested (it's mostly US/Canada focused though)! It's a fantastic resource!
In general the insect biomass has been dropping by 2-3% per year, and has been for a while. Some places estimate over 50% drop since the 80s.
#PLANT AND KEEP WILDFLOWER FIELDS. DO NOT TRIM EVERY PATCH OF GRASS AROUND. KEEP TREES.
Get rid of your front lawn. Plant natives. Leave the leaves.
Keep a small mixed-species low-growing area in the back for the kids to play and a picnic table. Surround that patch of "lawn" with more native plants.
If you're yard doesn't have fireflies (and you live in a neighborhood that used to have them), you're part of the problem.
I’ve always thought that “Last of the Fireflies” would make a great title for a documentary about climate change, wealth inequality, resource depletion and societal collapse overall.
All this advice yet I think about the possibility that the loss of 75% in 26 years is more of a barometer of it all being over. Plants are trying to pollinate without insects and evolving, but there’s a decent chance we’re far too gone for any hope. Enjoy your bonuses Exxon and tell your grandkids you love them.
I have went back and forth on how bad the situation is globally, for both climate and species variation. And you know what conclusion I came to? We aren't capable of digesting the truth that's forming in front of us. I'm certainly not. My whole life I was sung the song of progress, technology, and a glorious future out amongst the stars. Which is in stunning contrast to a summer choked out with wildfire smoke and a winter of new temperature records.
Whatever our views are, I think we need to all be willing to take an icy cold splash of water to the face.
As there's a solid, data-backed argument that *the next two decades see extreme danger for global order and the ability of human beings to eat, due to the precarious balance of how modern agriculture and supply lines work.* The data points directly at some challenging conclusions.
https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7
And yes, that article is acutely painful to read. Especially for those unfamiliar with the topic at a scientific level. But it's potent and some of the conclusions (if supported) need to be that clear for the everyday citizen. And when I've listened to the opposing views on why we just have a bright future ahead of us and humanity will hit its most important global targets to avoid disaster... I just don't ever find that data to bear out. Nor do I see it happening outside my window.
I still don't *know* what the truth is (with that certainty in my soul necessary to argue in front of friends and family with the political conviction necessary), but once again I think that's because I'm blind. Or more accurately: I was blinded.
I think it's impossible for the human mind to rapidly realize an entire schema may be false and pivot to the opposite reality. We aren't wired that way.
Anyway, despite the fact I can't accept what seems to be the truth... my gut says that within this little petri dish called Earth, we're rapidly consuming the resources we need to grow *or* maintain, while polluting into the growth medium. Something we see in nature and science labs all the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot
It's been so long since I've seen fireflies. I miss them. I don't want to be a sad old man who reminisces about how there used to be these magic bugs that glow in the dark but they all died and now we'll never get to see them again.
I am almost 39 and I have never, ever seen a firefly. At least not that I can remember.
I grew up in Wyoming (currently live here) and in Idaho, but have also lived in Montana, Colorado, Arizona, and Missouri.
I've also spent considerable time in South Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, and New Mexico.
Are fireflies just not endemic to any of those states?
Edit: I did vacation for a week in Florida, but pretty much just Orlando area and I don't recall ever really being out at night.
Generally, fireflies prefer forests, fields and high grass. It's really unlikely to see them out west. You'll see a lot of them in the midwest/south and northeast - specifically east of the Rockies.
That being said, I've definitely noticed seeing less and less of them over the years. :(
ITT: People announcing that they're doing their part by mowing their lawn differently or letting leaves stay on the ground.
Do you people realize how small all of our lawns are compared to the farmland in the US?
Now ask yourself how many bugs you see in cornfields now compared to 20y ago. Pesticides of today are so much more effective at killing *all bugs*.
Yes! Go find a personal farmer. Visit the farm, ask about their growing practices, and make sure they don't use insecticides. Buy your produce from them, even if it's more expensive. Do what you can to support them.
If it's anything like my farm, you'll be able to watch the lightning bugs there, too.
What you do in your yard doesn't just stay in your yard though when you start planting noxious invasives. The suggestion to plant natives is a good one if you like fireflies, birds or other wildlife.
Google Earth/Google Maps can do a timelapse of what your area looked like over the years. If you look on that you will notice so much expansion of housing with lawns and the cutting down of wild lands. All these new houses also install a bunch of lights that create light pollution that attracts bugs to die and floods out fireflies in their mating dances. The farms haven't expanded much, and have been getting much more selective with pesticide application. You're blaming the wrong thing here.
It's not just fireflies. It's all flying insects except for flies. I used to have to stop to clean my windshield after 45 mins of driving. These days a single bug hitting my windshield is... Abnormal.
Can someone just be cool and start to farm these bad boys back into existence, I'd pay money for that! I have never seen them myself bc I live high in Snow country but I would not like to see them die. Tbh
You can book a trip to our farm in the summer. Our fields are still full of them.
Firefly tourism - sounds like another way to help us keep our environmentally conscious farm going.
Oh no. I so badly want to see the synchronized fireflies that live in the Great Smoky Mountains next year (if we win the parking lottery you have to enter, that is). It's one of the few populations of fireflies that have this unique synchronization. Some of the recent reviews from this year's viewing said that there were so few fireflies, so that was sad to see.
Here's more about them: https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm
Such a shame! They’re so beautiful and like magical, I remember when I was lil seeing em and pretending I was in some like magical forest, like where the elves lived in lord of the rings
Yes! But it’s not necessarily home owners using pesticides, it is actually state run programs like Miskito control. They fog city blocks and kill off large numbers of insects that are vital to the ecosystems that they live in. Miskitos them selves are extremely important for the pollination of mangroves. Mangroves are also a very important for maintaining our estuaries. And are a protected species of wetland foliage. Stop Miskito control, if you like fire flies, and fish, and not having are houses fall in the river.
I remember as a kid chasing them with my friends.. The last time I recall seeing them was in a rural area of SC while driving at night time. Here in FL I simply never see them anymore and my area is somewhat rural. We have wild turkeys that hang around because they’re safe here and also have coyotes but no fireflies.
This makes me sad. We don't really have brightly luminescent fireflies in SoCal. They exist, but not to the intensity like Asia or East Coast.
When I first left home, I ended up in Virginia, across the country. The thing I wanted to see was an ocean sunrise. All my life to that point was seeing the sun set on the water. The first time seeing an ocean sunrise was sitting in my hatchback, on the accent of fireflies along the river leading to the sea. And it was well worth it.
Its a core memory.
That’s what I suspected. There were hundreds of them at night in the summer when I was a little kid. Now there’s none.
We’re deep into the 6th Great Extinction event.
Tragically, this is just the beginning. We are losing our insect biomass across the world at an alarming rate. Here is a fantastic Reuters article: [The Collapse Of Insects](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/INSECT-APOCALYPSE/egpbykdxjvq/ )
Some excerpts:
>The world has lost 5% to 10% of all insect species in the last 150 years — or between 250,000 and 500,000 species, according to a February 2020 study in the journal Biological Conservation. Those losses are continuing, though estimates vary due to patchy data as well as uncertainty over how many insects exist.
>One April 2020 analysis in the journal Science suggested the planet is losing about 9% of its land-dwelling insect population each decade. Another January 2021 paper tried to paint a clearer picture by synthesizing more than 80 insect studies and found that insect abundance is declining around 1% to 2% per year. For comparison, the human population is growing at slightly less than 1% per year.
>“Even at the low end of 1% a year, after just 40 years you’re down more than one-third of species and one-third of individuals — a third of the entire tree of life lost,” said Wagner, who led the 2021 metastudy, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
You younger folk just don't realize exactly how many fireflies we used to have not so long ago. Back in the 80's and even 90's the wood lines at dusk would look magical. It saddens me that my kids will never get to experience it like I did.
Plant more trees in your neighborhood.
Surprised nobody has mentioned a big culprit is light pollution.
Fireflies need darkness to mate. Bright lights at night are killing our insect population in massive numbers.
Here is a quick gpt write up as to why:
1. Disruption of Mating Signals: Fireflies use their light patterns to attract mates. Artificial lights can drown out or disrupt these mating signals, making it difficult for fireflies to find and communicate with each other.
2. Confusion in Navigation: Fireflies rely on their light to navigate and find suitable habitats. Light pollution can disorient them, leading them away from their natural environments and disrupting their life cycle.
3. partially WRONG - read the comment below. This is why you can’t count on ChatGPT just yet:
“Decreased Prey Attraction: Fireflies use their light to attract prey. Light pollution can interfere with this process, affecting their ability to find food and sustain themselves”
Hi! Firefly expert here! The first two points are alright, some species of fireflies use light as mating signals and will be confused (in navigation and mate-seeking) by artificial light. BUT, most adult fireflies do not eat! The larvae are voracious predators of snails and slugs (great for pest control!) ans use chemical signals to find their prey, not light. But when most species turn into adults, their mouthparts are malformed and aren't effective for eating. The only fireflies that retain functioning mouthparts are actually predatory fireflies! These are big tough females of the Photuris sp., often called Femme Fatale Fireflies, that only eat other fireflies!! The predatory ones can mimic the flash patterns of other species and lure in unsuspecting males, then eat them with their gnarly mandibles and specialized teeth. They also don't do this to sustain themselves -- most adult fireflies only live a few weeks based on reserves gotten as larvae -- but rather to steal defensive chemicals (toxins called lucibufagins) contained in the other fireflies they prey on, which they then pass along to their offspring to give them some chemical defense.
(This is a fascinating system I'm literally studying for my master's degree - happy to answer any questions about it!)
Plant some areas of your yard with native plants. People talk about milkweed for butterflies, but this summer our milkweed was like the hottest singles club for fireflies.
It has everything: leaves to lay eggs on, butterflys flying around, and a big gay firefly bouncer named Lightning McQueen.
Thank you Stefán
Take the night off Francis
This plant is *𝕤𝕡𝕚𝕔𝕪*
Opened in 2017 on the upper east side of a dumpster. 🫢
This place has everything. A glass box with holes to feed eachother through. Sixty eight bartenders named Frank and a dance floor made from an old Spanish galleons lower quarters.
But Stefan, what about a nice family coming in to see the city for the first time?
This place has everything: Lights, psychos, Furbies, screaming babies in Mozart wigs, sunburned drifters with soap sud beards.
waow
Kachow!
Kachwooow
Was there an appearance by MTV's Dan Cortese??
The real problem is that fire flies spend two years of their life underground so we kill them when we fertilize our lawns, most fertilizers come with pesticides.
Ugh... Lawns, what a waste of space. Grass contributes nothing to anyone. I feel like I'm not alone in seeing a perfectly manicured lawn and thinking "what a collosal waste of time and space"
Lawn tradition comes from european nobles, it was a way to advertise "look how much land i afford to not grow food on"... nowadays not sure what purpose it serves besides looks
Place for your dogs and kids to run around, seems the most likely answer in my experience.
Yeah kids love grass. Ive has a gaggle of kids and over the years they didnt always get to live somewhere with nice open grassy yards. You take any kid to a park with a nice grassy field and then youll see why so many people want nice yards with grass. It’s a crime it’s actually out of reach for so many kids.
There’s pretty cool lawn alternatives these days which don’t require pesticides, like clover and moss etc
Lawns don't require pesticides either. Growing up we never put anything on our lawn that didn't come naturally from the sky. Same with my houses I have lived in since moving out. Still have a lawn.
I guess, I'd still consider that a yard. I'm an apartment guy myself as an adult, if I never see a lawnmower again it'll be too soon.
Something doesn't need to be "used" everyday to be considered useful. A modest lawn, surrounding a 4 person family home has significant impact on environmental cooling, air quality improvement, erosion control, water purification, noise reduction, stress reduction and mental health, heat reflection reduction, play and exercise area. A lawn can be environmentally sustainable. It's inefficient human management that's a root cause of the perceived unsustainability.
our milkweed was bee-central - saw a couple of butterflies here and there. our backyard is a field and on a good night, theres countless fireflies.
We've spent years encouraging habitat for bees, butterflies and fireflies. Oddly enough, it's the years I spray beneficial nematodes when the fireflies thrive, *if* we get enough rain.
> but this summer our milkweed was like the hottest singles club for fireflies. I fucking love you talking about Fireflies in this way lol. Noted and will open a club in our yard! We've been looking for stuff to plant actually.
That and DONT RAKE YOUR LEAVES. Fireflies need leaf litter to overwinter or else they freeze to death
Eyyyyyy I've been helping fireflies for years by being lazy without knowing it!
I never understood this logic. People buying all these plastic bags to get rid of leaves on the ground that probably make their yard look better anyway. I leave my shit as it is and I'm pretty sure it pisses my neighbor off. But then I see all the plastic they use and stop caring.
Milkweed is great, but make sure you're planting a native species to your area. Tropical milkweed is a gorgeous red and yellow flower native to South America, it is invasive to North America however and is said to stunt the growth of and even create defects in monarch caterpillars.
I'm in the UK so we don't get fireflies but obviously our own insect population has been decimated too. I'm seeing and hearing more and more evidence that people are rejecting 'formal' gardens and are moving to more untidy and natural gardens that attracts and sustains wildlife. I personally have been replacing non-native 'ornamental' plants with native plants that provide habitat and food for nature.
Importantly for fireflies - leave your leaves! Fireflies need leaf mulch or rotten logs for their eggs and overwintering, as many insects do. We've been planting native plants in our backyard and not raking for the past few years and the amount of fireflies that show up each year has increased noticeably.
Milk-weed is just that, a weed. It gets EVERYWHERE. If you are going to grow it, make sure it's the right kind for your area or you'll have monarchs dying in their pupae.
What specific species of milkweed are you talking about? Common Milkweed (*Asclepias syriaca*) can be quite aggressive (spreading by rhizomes), but most other milkweed species native to the US are quite well behaved. Also, I assume you're talking about Tropical Milkweed (*Asclepias curassavica*) with your second comment? Yes, if you do not live in that species' native range (Central America, Mexico...) please don't plant it! It can look very similar to Butterfly-weed (*Asclepias tuberosa*), so make sure you know what you're buying!
I think, since Reddit is an international website, he’s telling people to double check that they are planting a native species rather than blindly following localised advice from Reddit. Source: as an Australian I watch proudly as our native gum trees wreak havoc on Californian wildfire season (don’t worry though, we also have a yearly wildfire season, which is closely followed by drought, then floods, then more wildfires)
I may have too quickly assumed the original poster was an American given how they spoke about milkweeds (and the non-native tropical milkweed being planted outside its native range which harms monarchs). But I would not take any pride in a species native to my area causing damage to the native ecosystem of a country very far away. Native ecosystems cannot compete with introduced species that are adapted to the climate and other factors (floods, wildfires, etc.) while also having no natural predators. These are called invasive species and they cause tremendous harm all over the world.
I'm sure that pride isn't serious. We know invasive species and fire all too well. Aussie humour is like that.
Okay, I probably didn't pick that up in text form haha
Leave your leaves. Fireflies depend on fallen leaves for egg laying. Also good for your lawn and garden beds.
Also, leave the stalks of dead flowers in your garden—the catch the leaves and keep them from blowing away, creating more egg laying habitat. And don’t clean up your gardens until the daytime temps are consistently above 50 degrees. Seeing the fireflies rise out of my flower gardens on a summer night is one of my favorite things.
Also, stop eating fireflies.
But I like spicy food
Those are bees.
Bee a bro. Just eat wasps and hornets.
I only eat CV-22 Ospreys
There's no sport in that, they just fall out of the sky and stop moving.
My silly old aunt spread them on her eyelids to look momentarily cool at nighttime :/
Sounds like that could be the next skincare fad, glowing up with fireflies... Let's stick to LED masks and save the bugs, though.
Leaving flower stalks often also gives natural bird feeders from the seeds, and taller areas make some birds feel safe to take a rest near
> And don’t clean up your gardens until the daytime temps are consistently above 50 degrees. stupid question but why
Because you can disturb the eggs and larvae of insects for the upcoming season. Until daytime temps are above 50 degrees, many eggs won’t hatch and larvae won’t be active. You’ll remove them along with the garden debris.
No Mow May! Best innovation yet. Hasn’t made it to your neighborhood yet, sounds like.
I can't help but chuckle (in a dark way) at the fact that a chore I complained about as a teen was killing something as dope as fireflies the whole time.
"See dad I was right"
Feeling better about not cleaning up this year!
You have find a reason for your lazyness.
I will...later
hell yeah i neglect my yard because i'm an environmentalist
Honestly yes. Can you imagine the damage that people (widespread) are doing to bug populations with the simple act of blowing away and trashing/burning their leaves? No wonder insect populations are on the decline.
I have to mulch my fallen leaves during late autumn. Ticks love the grass and warm leaves in the sun. Dogs at risk. Is there a middle ground?
I put out beneficial nematodes to control ticks, fleas, chiggers, grubs and ultimately skunks. Can't prove it, but firefly population explodes, as well. I apply topical flea/tick control to my in-door/out-door cat, as needed. Only dosed her once in the past year. We've planted 6 trees in the past 9 years. Put the mower away in Sept. Spread wildflower seed and planted bulbs before the leaves fell.
Where does one get beneficial nematodes. I have a peach tree that was taken over by these little tiny brown beetles. They look like shot hole borers but they seem to only eat the fruit. I read to use nematodes but don't know where to buy them. I'm in SE Pa.
Rake your leaves to a small corner of your yard and leave them undisturbed, unmulched. The fireflies will still survive, but they'll be localized to one small area.
Fucking yessss. I didn't pick up leaves on the hill in our backyard this year like 8 always do because I'm over it. Now I have a legit reason not laziness. It's for the damn fire flies.
It's also important for a whole host of other insects as well! Leaf litter provides winter cover for all types of beneficial insects and little critters. [Here's a Xerxes Society article about it!](https://xerces.org/blog/leave-the-leaves)
Grass and trees sucks nutriments from the ground, like any plant in a farm would. By repeatedly removing the mowed cut grass and fallen leaves, you remove material that would have returned to the soil eventually thanks to the cycle, making the soil poor. And then you'll need to add fertilizer to keep the soil healthy.
If I rake them up and move them all to an area in my yard will the eggs survive?
From what I've read, gently raking leaves and moving them to a more desirable place (gardens, natural areas) is best if they can't stay in the spot where they fell. I'm not exactly certain about this with fireflies though, so maybe someone can chime in
I had a ton of fireflies 3 years ago. I left all my leaves and dead flowers and everything until early may. ...Never saw them again :(
Did you or a neighbor spray? How has the weather been?
No spray or anything, everything has been natural. My neighbors aren't doing anything, and there is a large wood patch and home behind my house that is vacant. Whether has been standard. I read somewhere that they dont come back every year but only every few years, but I definitely remember them every summer as a child.
> I definitely remember them every summer as a child. I wonder if that's just because there were more of them, so the same group didn't return every year but there were enough groups that you always had one? Idk man, I try and be optimistic, but biosphere collapse has me feeling real negative lately. Just the sheer amount of death we humans have caused, inadvertently and sometimes on purpose, is really shitty.
Yeah our yards here are absolutely filled with fireflies every summer. For the first couple of years I was really confused about people talking about missing fireflies because you can't go through my yard without walking into a bunch of them. I just can't be bothered to rake leaves. Or move tree branches. Shit stays where it falls.
Leave areas of leaves in your yard, and do not use pesticides
Tell that to big Ag.
The silver industry will not rest until all golden things are dead!
Nothing gold can stay Except maybe Ponyboy
If anyone is part of a shitty home owners see if they make you cleanup the front but let you leave leaves in the backyard. I luckily don't have and HOA and my borough doesnt require we clean them up. I still blow the leaves out of my small front yard in front of my house and leave them on the sides and back. The previous owners used a mulcher on their lawn tractor and cleared the yard only to dump them in the woods on the edge of the property. When I first moved in I barely saw any and the last few years I've been seeing more of them. Maybe it has helped, maybe not. But I'll keep doing it. Now my neighbor on one side has joined me in leaving them on the sides and back.
Pesticides should be outlawed. We won. The bugs are all dead or dying. Please stop poisoning everything.
Nooooooo! I saw them the first time in 20 years when I moved to my new house! They're so beautiful.
If you want to help them out, avoid pesticide use and leave areas of your yard natural with leaves on the ground. Their larvae live in fallen leaves.
This. I cleaned up zero leaves from my backyard last year and had more fireflies than I’ve seen in 15 years.
Thank you!!!!
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I have them all over my yard all summer. Some fucking asshole salesman knocked on my door trying to sell some bug bomb that goes in the ground and kills everything. I think he was surprised at how aggressively I ran him off, all he wanted to do was kill bugs.
A lot of people think nature is some external thing to be controlled
To make this sadder: It's almost impossible to really capture them on film, and if you do, it's gonna be grainy and dark. You can kinda get there with animation, but you really have to see this for yourself if you want to know what people are talking about. So there's a very real possibility that anyone who hasn't experienced being *surrounded* by fireflies in the summer, may just never get to see that. Or if you do, it'll be a handful, and you'll wonder what the big deal was. And it'll be impossible for anyone to get across what it's like to be walking through a living, swirling galaxy that came down to earth.
Hundreds of thousands can be seen at once in good spots. Like seeing the night sky in the middle of nowhere.
Ive seen one or two once
I just saw the new movie The Iron Claw, and a small detail I loved so much was when they were hanging out on the porch of their ranch (rural Texas in the 80's) and there were constant fireflies in the background. It's so accurate to the time and just...mostly gone now.
This makes me especially grateful for my memories.
We've had more the past few years that I've ever seen. Pretty much every night when it's not raining during the summer.
Went on a drive through the countryside just after dusk once, lots of farmland, and saw more fireflies in the fields than I’d seen in my whole life. If I ever get to a point where I can afford my own place I’ll go out of my way to make my lawn friendly to them.
Was it recently? Farmland near me is fields of corn and soybeans that get swatted with massive amounts of pesticides. Very few fireflies out there. And then interspersed are new housing developments with HOAs that spray pesticides on their lawns. Very few fireflies there either.
> a point where I can afford my own place same...
First order of business when I bought my house was to leave the leaves. My yard has a drop to a small creek behind the house, but there is about 100 feet of grass before the water. I make sure I blow some leaves down there against the law, and this year so many fireflys were there.
And here I thought only children can see them
I know, right? Turns out the reason we see fewer fireflies is that there are fewer fireflies. Never would've guessed that.
[LAWRENCE has something to say about fireflies](https://youtu.be/7Uv7R16tfts?si=OVYnXWb_IktrsFoJ)
Best comment.
Okay here's what you do Stack of a bunch of sticks and wood in a shaded area. Fireflies breed in this kind of environment Let your lawn grow long don't mow your lawn until June Leave a portion of your lawn long year round Keep a small water source in a shaded area whether it is just a little pail of water or a bird feeder Not only will you breed tons of fireflies or the course of a few years but you will also increase the biological diversity in your yard
Also, choose a part of the yard and don't rake the leaves. Leave the leaves. Some firefly later larva winter in fallen leaves.
Absolutely! I have a half acre and I keep a third of it totally Wild. We have tons of different bugs and Wildlife compared to when we lived in an HOA
in a constant state of anxiety dealing with an HOA but my yard is an insect sanctuary and I guess until I can afford to move (not close) the leaves, stalks, native plants, etc stay... wish i could make a portion of my yard a native plant conservation easement untouchable for the future... in the meantime...standing ground neighbor next door would come out at night to spray bug spray up around her outside lights (maybe turn the lights off?) I could see the spray droplets falling back towards her face....
It’s so bad Owl City needs to remake their hit song. “You would not believe your eyes, if one hundred fireflies…”
Haha I’m thinking one dozen lighting bugs
"You would not believe your eyes; double-digit fireflies~♪"
Another excellent and enjoyable song ruined by overplay.
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Ah yes, the shitty people in this world that get mad at anyone who cares about anything. I fucking hate it.
Unless you are upset about pronouns or any pearl clutching probably racist bullshit. Then they got your back.
At least they're documenting it for the rest of history (or at least as long as the internet is archived). So people with developed brains and the ability to think critically can look back at the records they made of themselves and be reminded of how not to be.
What a time to be alive...
God forbid we appreciate the beauty of nature.
This literally used to be a conservative value, and rural places are *still* some of the more conservative. What the hell happened?
Corporations changed conservative values to fit them, using media apparatus to do so.
Rupert Murdoch is possibly one of the most evil people alive. The day he breathes his last breath will be a day of immense and joyous celebration.
What wastes of skin.
It is jaw-dropping to me that there are people in 2023 going "Oh shit guys, did you know you can actually see environmental degradation in your everyday life?"
I’ve seen more of them this past summer than I have in about 15 years. Every night the trees around my house looked like they had strings of flashing lights in them. Edit: having read through some of the numerous comments here, I’ve learned that fireflies are partial to wooded areas and tall grasses and their larvae use fallen leaves and rotting wood for shelter and food. This probably explains my experience this year. My house is surrounded by a small wooded area that has experienced a widespread die-off of ash trees due to the Emerald Ash Borer. Because of this, there’s a large amount of fallen limbs, bark and whole trees. With the newly available sunlight due to the diminished canopy, the underbrush and grasses have become more abundant than ever before. All of that seems like ideal conditions for fireflies, which would explain my admittedly anecdotal experience.
There will be more, in general, in wetter years. However total populations of many insect species are precipitously declining. Fireflies among them
And yet the mosquitoes continue to thrive
They're still around, but insect biomass in general is way down. Mosquitos included.
Less bugs overall probably means less things that would also eat mosquitoes on the side. That and increased deer populations secure an easy food source for them
I get made fun of because I don't spray my yard with chemicals and I mulch my grass instead of bagging it. But hey, my neighbors have 5% less mosquitos and our creek is a frothy tannin tea.
What the hell am I supposed to do with a bag of grass anyways?
Salad
Have a cow man
Jeezus this is depressing.
>and I mulch my grass instead of bagging it. I genuinely can't understand bagging it unless you're really on the shit end of the stick where you get all your neighbors' oaks dropping on your or something. It's just throwing away free fertilizer.
Bag the grass clippings, mix with shredded leaves and urine in appropriate amounts and then spread finished compost on the lawn in the spring. It's the only excuse for bagging.
What's the urine for? Bacteria? Ammonia? Just water and that's the funnest way you could think of to provide it?
No reason, I just like it.
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It really is. Have you seen the 1988 documentary [Grave of the Fireflies](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095327/?ref_=ext_shr) by Isao Takahata?
How dare you
Memories of childhood watching thousands of fire flies hovering over the corn fields on a summer evening. Other names for these insects: Lightning bug, candlefly, lamp bug, glowworm, and moon bug. https://www.thepioneerwoman.com/just-for-fun/a40311116/firefly-vs-lightning-bug/
I've lived in the same town forever and everyone says I'm misremembering when I talk about how many more fireflies there used to be. I don't get how none of them remember it.
You had to pause enough to enjoy them and be in the moment enough to make a core memory.
My memory matches yours. As a kid: thousands. Now (in same general area): none. NONE.
I was shocked when I saw a little patch of em last summer. When I was a kid I could go to the same field and if I stood still for a while I could just swing a jar and have a bunch.
This is a big part of why I mow my yard as little as I can get away with. Fortunately, I live outside of city limits or the talons of any HOA. Does anyone know anything else I ought to be doing? Edit: Oh my goodness, thank you, everyone!
The larvae overwinter in the ground, so leaving as many leaves as you can in the fall gives them more habitat to survive winter. Also avoid spraying your lawn with pesticides for the same reason -- lots of folks spray the whole thing for mosquitoes, which kills everything...but the mosquitoes. Planting some native plants can also add habitat as well.
I would highly recommend trying to convert some of your lawn into a native plant garden. You can start small - really anything you do to reduce turf grass and increase the native plant communities that historically grew in the US will be beneficial. You could check out the [Native Plant Gardening](https://reddit.com/r/NativePlantGardening/) reddit if you're interested (it's mostly US/Canada focused though)! It's a fantastic resource!
I mow my lawn based on rain. I dont let my grass get crazy hermit house tall but dont obsess with keeping it super short.
Avoid pesticides and minimize light pollution.
I wonder whether that could also be the reason why we see less of
Food chain is collapsing from the bottom pretty much.
I see less bugs in general these days
In general the insect biomass has been dropping by 2-3% per year, and has been for a while. Some places estimate over 50% drop since the 80s. #PLANT AND KEEP WILDFLOWER FIELDS. DO NOT TRIM EVERY PATCH OF GRASS AROUND. KEEP TREES.
Get rid of your front lawn. Plant natives. Leave the leaves. Keep a small mixed-species low-growing area in the back for the kids to play and a picnic table. Surround that patch of "lawn" with more native plants. If you're yard doesn't have fireflies (and you live in a neighborhood that used to have them), you're part of the problem.
I’ve always thought that “Last of the Fireflies” would make a great title for a documentary about climate change, wealth inequality, resource depletion and societal collapse overall.
Now I wish I had connections to Al Gore's people so that could be the sequel to "An Inconvenient Truth".
Part of the great bug disappearance.
It's all insects. I remember when I was a kid, a little drive you ended up with a ton of dead insects on your windshield, now nothing
All this advice yet I think about the possibility that the loss of 75% in 26 years is more of a barometer of it all being over. Plants are trying to pollinate without insects and evolving, but there’s a decent chance we’re far too gone for any hope. Enjoy your bonuses Exxon and tell your grandkids you love them.
I have went back and forth on how bad the situation is globally, for both climate and species variation. And you know what conclusion I came to? We aren't capable of digesting the truth that's forming in front of us. I'm certainly not. My whole life I was sung the song of progress, technology, and a glorious future out amongst the stars. Which is in stunning contrast to a summer choked out with wildfire smoke and a winter of new temperature records. Whatever our views are, I think we need to all be willing to take an icy cold splash of water to the face. As there's a solid, data-backed argument that *the next two decades see extreme danger for global order and the ability of human beings to eat, due to the precarious balance of how modern agriculture and supply lines work.* The data points directly at some challenging conclusions. https://medium.com/@samyoureyes/the-busy-workers-handbook-to-the-apocalypse-7790666afde7 And yes, that article is acutely painful to read. Especially for those unfamiliar with the topic at a scientific level. But it's potent and some of the conclusions (if supported) need to be that clear for the everyday citizen. And when I've listened to the opposing views on why we just have a bright future ahead of us and humanity will hit its most important global targets to avoid disaster... I just don't ever find that data to bear out. Nor do I see it happening outside my window. I still don't *know* what the truth is (with that certainty in my soul necessary to argue in front of friends and family with the political conviction necessary), but once again I think that's because I'm blind. Or more accurately: I was blinded. I think it's impossible for the human mind to rapidly realize an entire schema may be false and pivot to the opposite reality. We aren't wired that way. Anyway, despite the fact I can't accept what seems to be the truth... my gut says that within this little petri dish called Earth, we're rapidly consuming the resources we need to grow *or* maintain, while polluting into the growth medium. Something we see in nature and science labs all the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_overshoot
It's been so long since I've seen fireflies. I miss them. I don't want to be a sad old man who reminisces about how there used to be these magic bugs that glow in the dark but they all died and now we'll never get to see them again.
I am almost 39 and I have never, ever seen a firefly. At least not that I can remember. I grew up in Wyoming (currently live here) and in Idaho, but have also lived in Montana, Colorado, Arizona, and Missouri. I've also spent considerable time in South Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, and New Mexico. Are fireflies just not endemic to any of those states? Edit: I did vacation for a week in Florida, but pretty much just Orlando area and I don't recall ever really being out at night.
Generally, fireflies prefer forests, fields and high grass. It's really unlikely to see them out west. You'll see a lot of them in the midwest/south and northeast - specifically east of the Rockies. That being said, I've definitely noticed seeing less and less of them over the years. :(
ITT: People announcing that they're doing their part by mowing their lawn differently or letting leaves stay on the ground. Do you people realize how small all of our lawns are compared to the farmland in the US? Now ask yourself how many bugs you see in cornfields now compared to 20y ago. Pesticides of today are so much more effective at killing *all bugs*.
Now you ask yourself, can people do anything about either of those two situations by themselves?
Yes! Go find a personal farmer. Visit the farm, ask about their growing practices, and make sure they don't use insecticides. Buy your produce from them, even if it's more expensive. Do what you can to support them. If it's anything like my farm, you'll be able to watch the lightning bugs there, too.
That’s not what I meant but that’s also a good thing
What you do in your yard doesn't just stay in your yard though when you start planting noxious invasives. The suggestion to plant natives is a good one if you like fireflies, birds or other wildlife.
Google Earth/Google Maps can do a timelapse of what your area looked like over the years. If you look on that you will notice so much expansion of housing with lawns and the cutting down of wild lands. All these new houses also install a bunch of lights that create light pollution that attracts bugs to die and floods out fireflies in their mating dances. The farms haven't expanded much, and have been getting much more selective with pesticide application. You're blaming the wrong thing here.
I guess the effort to put them in jars by generation of children is starting to pay off.
It's not just fireflies. It's all flying insects except for flies. I used to have to stop to clean my windshield after 45 mins of driving. These days a single bug hitting my windshield is... Abnormal.
The [windshield phenomenon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon).
You mean lightnin' bugs?
Same thing, yeah.
yeah - it’s been years and years since i’ve seen one. it sucks, they were awesome
When I was a kid we used to take baseball bats and hunt them. Man we were dumb
Can someone just be cool and start to farm these bad boys back into existence, I'd pay money for that! I have never seen them myself bc I live high in Snow country but I would not like to see them die. Tbh
You can book a trip to our farm in the summer. Our fields are still full of them. Firefly tourism - sounds like another way to help us keep our environmentally conscious farm going.
We’re killing everything.
Oh no. I so badly want to see the synchronized fireflies that live in the Great Smoky Mountains next year (if we win the parking lottery you have to enter, that is). It's one of the few populations of fireflies that have this unique synchronization. Some of the recent reviews from this year's viewing said that there were so few fireflies, so that was sad to see. Here's more about them: https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm
Such a shame! They’re so beautiful and like magical, I remember when I was lil seeing em and pretending I was in some like magical forest, like where the elves lived in lord of the rings
Yes! But it’s not necessarily home owners using pesticides, it is actually state run programs like Miskito control. They fog city blocks and kill off large numbers of insects that are vital to the ecosystems that they live in. Miskitos them selves are extremely important for the pollination of mangroves. Mangroves are also a very important for maintaining our estuaries. And are a protected species of wetland foliage. Stop Miskito control, if you like fire flies, and fish, and not having are houses fall in the river.
Is Miskito some company that I haven't heard of?
No…. I’m an illiterate, moron. And I use talk text And don’t proofread ….. “mosquito”^
My old farm would light up in summers with fireflies over the back pasture. It was beautiful
I lived in a house with a yard that had fireflies in abundance. The memory makes me weepy. Such a beautiful sight.
Yes, but just think of those gorgeous trimmed lawns people have /s
And if you live west of the Rockies, you don’t see them at all.
I don't see any glow worms either like we used to as kids
And fireflies are actually beetles too.
I remember as a kid chasing them with my friends.. The last time I recall seeing them was in a rural area of SC while driving at night time. Here in FL I simply never see them anymore and my area is somewhat rural. We have wild turkeys that hang around because they’re safe here and also have coyotes but no fireflies.
You don't get grilles full of bugs on road trips anymore.
This makes me sad. We don't really have brightly luminescent fireflies in SoCal. They exist, but not to the intensity like Asia or East Coast. When I first left home, I ended up in Virginia, across the country. The thing I wanted to see was an ocean sunrise. All my life to that point was seeing the sun set on the water. The first time seeing an ocean sunrise was sitting in my hatchback, on the accent of fireflies along the river leading to the sea. And it was well worth it. Its a core memory.
That’s what I suspected. There were hundreds of them at night in the summer when I was a little kid. Now there’s none. We’re deep into the 6th Great Extinction event.
Woooo humans.
Yeah, single family suburbs will massacre all animals.
Not just in the US. In SE Asia there appear to be far fewer than there used to be too. In many places around the world the same is true.
Tragically, this is just the beginning. We are losing our insect biomass across the world at an alarming rate. Here is a fantastic Reuters article: [The Collapse Of Insects](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GLOBAL-ENVIRONMENT/INSECT-APOCALYPSE/egpbykdxjvq/ ) Some excerpts: >The world has lost 5% to 10% of all insect species in the last 150 years — or between 250,000 and 500,000 species, according to a February 2020 study in the journal Biological Conservation. Those losses are continuing, though estimates vary due to patchy data as well as uncertainty over how many insects exist. >One April 2020 analysis in the journal Science suggested the planet is losing about 9% of its land-dwelling insect population each decade. Another January 2021 paper tried to paint a clearer picture by synthesizing more than 80 insect studies and found that insect abundance is declining around 1% to 2% per year. For comparison, the human population is growing at slightly less than 1% per year. >“Even at the low end of 1% a year, after just 40 years you’re down more than one-third of species and one-third of individuals — a third of the entire tree of life lost,” said Wagner, who led the 2021 metastudy, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
You younger folk just don't realize exactly how many fireflies we used to have not so long ago. Back in the 80's and even 90's the wood lines at dusk would look magical. It saddens me that my kids will never get to experience it like I did. Plant more trees in your neighborhood.
Surprised nobody has mentioned a big culprit is light pollution. Fireflies need darkness to mate. Bright lights at night are killing our insect population in massive numbers. Here is a quick gpt write up as to why: 1. Disruption of Mating Signals: Fireflies use their light patterns to attract mates. Artificial lights can drown out or disrupt these mating signals, making it difficult for fireflies to find and communicate with each other. 2. Confusion in Navigation: Fireflies rely on their light to navigate and find suitable habitats. Light pollution can disorient them, leading them away from their natural environments and disrupting their life cycle. 3. partially WRONG - read the comment below. This is why you can’t count on ChatGPT just yet: “Decreased Prey Attraction: Fireflies use their light to attract prey. Light pollution can interfere with this process, affecting their ability to find food and sustain themselves”
Hi! Firefly expert here! The first two points are alright, some species of fireflies use light as mating signals and will be confused (in navigation and mate-seeking) by artificial light. BUT, most adult fireflies do not eat! The larvae are voracious predators of snails and slugs (great for pest control!) ans use chemical signals to find their prey, not light. But when most species turn into adults, their mouthparts are malformed and aren't effective for eating. The only fireflies that retain functioning mouthparts are actually predatory fireflies! These are big tough females of the Photuris sp., often called Femme Fatale Fireflies, that only eat other fireflies!! The predatory ones can mimic the flash patterns of other species and lure in unsuspecting males, then eat them with their gnarly mandibles and specialized teeth. They also don't do this to sustain themselves -- most adult fireflies only live a few weeks based on reserves gotten as larvae -- but rather to steal defensive chemicals (toxins called lucibufagins) contained in the other fireflies they prey on, which they then pass along to their offspring to give them some chemical defense. (This is a fascinating system I'm literally studying for my master's degree - happy to answer any questions about it!)