33 ms·

The firefly population could be declining

232 points by dontbenebby 4y ago

jt2190 4y ago
> People can help with firefly conservation by avoiding pesticides, [Marten Edwards, professor of biology at Muhlenberg College] said, and turning off outdoor lights, which confuse the bugs’ mating habits. > Another way to help, he said, is to planting trees and native grasses, and to allow log and leaf litter to accumulate. > “They prefer longer grass and they like to be in the leaf litter from the leaves that have fallen from last year” …
- fullstop 4y ago
  I live near Muhlenberg, oddly enough, and I have a lot of fireflies in my yard. edit: Here's some that my daughter captured. Don't worry, we released them! https://i.imgur.com/1ol4d6C.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/1ol4d6C.mp4
  - smcl 4y ago
    I was shocked when I saw them on holiday in Slovakia once. I really thought they were a USA or a jungle thing, had no idea we had them in Europe.
    - fullstop 4y ago
      I worked with a guy from Germany about 20 years ago, before it was as easy find this sort of information online. I asked him if they had fireflies in Germany and he kind of scoffed and told me "Of course we have them over there!" He didn't know, at the time, that they were extremely rare starting somewhere west of the Mississippi river.
      - msrenee 4y ago
        Are you saying they're rare west of the Mississippi or East of it? They were thick in the Midwest until recently.
        fullstop 4y ago
        Somewhere west of the Mississippi. I had also read "western Kansas" was the point at which they drop off considerably.
        msrenee 4y ago
        I suppose it's west of the Mississippi, but it's a long ways west. I'd imagine it's around the 100th meridian then. That goes through the middle of Kansas and is where you start to expect to see more western species as you travel west past it and vice versa.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >People can help with firefly conservation by avoiding pesticides I remember in the 90s, you'd be walking home and every lawn pretty much had signs to not go on the grass or you'd get a chemical rash/burn and have to go to the township hospital. (After being chewed out by a series of Moms for being dumb and/or rude.) Mine family was one of the few that didn't, but mine was the parent that got cancer, it's one of the reasons I believe in universal healthcare.
  - hedora 4y ago
    I've started seeing those signs again, but now they proudly proclaim that whatever they sprayed is "organic". (Same warnings about not getting near it, etc...)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway892238 4y ago
  And watch where you step! Females stay on the ground and males fly around to find them. There are very few females for each male, so if you capture or kill a firefly on the ground, that has an outsized effect on their reproduction. Use red outdoor lights instead of white to prevent them from getting confused. Absolutely turn off those huge floodlights people seem to love keeping on all night.
  - happimess 4y ago
    I am very grateful that I can add "don't you like fireflies?" to my list of reasons people should turn off their floodlights.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
We moved to the country 25 years ago. First summer, driving home after dark, my wife said "What's all those lights?" About 1B fireflies were flashing over a hayfield. "Fireflies!" "No, really! Fireflies are made up!" See, she grew up in the desert and thought stories about fireflies were in with fairies and elves. Anyway, haven't seen that again since. Now I know why.
- fullstop 4y ago
  > See, she grew up in the desert and thought stories about fireflies were in with fairies and elves. It's always cool when people visit us in the summer who have lived on the west coast their entire lives. Their first impressions of fireflies, as adults, is fun to watch. We hosted an exchange student from China, who had spent his entire life in a major city, and he expected fireflies to be hot to the touch. I still get a lot of them in my yard, but I also don't treat my lawn with anything other than what falls from the sky.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    > but I also don't treat my lawn with anything other than what falls from the sky Do people spread poison on their lawn? Why?
    - eastbound 4y ago
      For ants. Extremely polluting for water. If you take the non-lawn product right next to it, the label says (European here): “Don’t spread on lawns, in places accessible to animals or children, in places where it will be drained to common water, only spread on the concrete in front of the house where the rain doesn’t reach, in quantities (5g per meter)”. And they give you a 2kg bottle. So I guess the lawn product is quite bad too, albeit slightly better.
    - fullstop 4y ago
      In the USA, people absolutely put both herbicide and insecticide on their lawns. Here's one product that I've seen in stores: https://www.scotts.com/sites/g/files/oydgjc106/files/asset_files/49013-2%20label.pdf https://www.scotts.com/sites/g/files/oydgjc106/files/asset_f... The active ingredient here is bifenthrin, which has been (mostly) banned in the EU since 2019. This product is marketed for killing those "unsavory" bugs and promoting plant growth, but it is also extremely lethal to bees. I'm sure that my neighbors dislike the clover in my yard, but I've got bees buzzing about over here and they have a pristine-but-sterile landscape.
whalesalad 4y ago
Anecdotally I have seen a huge decrease in firefly's here in SE Michigan over the last few years. Five or so years ago you'd see hundreds of them while driving through the farm fields or sitting in your backyard enjoying a summer brewski. Last few years I hardly recall seeing any of them anywhere.
- jcims 4y ago
  Same story in Ohio. Used to be able to drive along pastures and see thousands of fireflies. My daughter saw some last night for the first time in quite a while. There were less than a dozen in a quarter acre area. She’s 19 and has noticed the difference. (Same with Monarch butterflies albeit on a longer timescale)
  - tomrod 4y ago
    I wonder if the many polar vortexes in 2014, (2015/2017?) have reduced insect populations substantially. I remember that foxes were frozen in fields in Columbus during 2014.
    - jcims 4y ago
      That’s a great question! No idea but it gives me a glimmer of hope it’s not purely human driven.
      - omegaworks 4y ago
        The polar vortex is a symptom of the weakening of the jetstream, thought to be occurring because of warming-driven melting of the arctic ice cap. Human-driven melting.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  Were they less in urban areas? I didn't see them as much when I lived in a city, but I don't know how much of that was light pollution, it's very difficult where I am to get out someplace where you could see the Milky Way without a car, and when I would I'd see a lot but "swarm" isn't the word I'd use. More like pixels blinking in a weird pattern.
UI_at_80x24 4y ago
Not just fireflys. All kinds of flying insects. I live in the Great Lakes region out in the country, and the need to clean my windshield and front license plate was a weekly requirement due to all the bug splatter from my daily commute into work. This need has plummeted in recent years. Another observation: Fish Flys They would be so thick, that I have seen snow shovels and once even a snow-plow used to clear them off the street! (I worked at a full-service gas station in my teen years, the snow shovel was necessary for that 1 week in May-June). You couldn't walk from a parking lot into a store without slipping from the sheer number that get crushed when you walk. The insect apocalypse is already here, and we are fucked.
- cainxinth 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    Thanks for the pointer, now my morning is shot as I dig through old diaries and photos rather than doing something productive. It's just a sample size of one, but by the time I got rid of my car, which I'd had through the twenty aughts, I no longer had to memorize which gas stations actually changed the windshield fluid. Maybe that's why some people have more bugs: they're coming out of the windshield fluid tanks at dodgy petrol shops whose cleaner buckets are all full of rainwater. :-) For context, I drove from Bloomington, Indiana to the Bay Area twice. First time a more northern route via Colorado, the second time a southern route through the ABQ area with a stopover at the Flamingo in Vegas, since at the time they had a valet and REALLY reasonable rooms, but I wouldn't repeat that even if they kept those amenities -- driving within Las Vegas was the scariest experience of my life. Just trying to turn right out of a gas station near the strip after having taken my tank up to full was nerve wracking. I felt safer on the 101 where I could let people overtake me and put the cruise control at 10 above the speed limit and listen to the audiobooks I had burned onto five MP3 CDs in a 5 disc changer. But very rarely did I encounter that stereotypical "SPLAT" of a bug, let alone so many I had to clean the windshield... the issue was more dust and grime.
moron4hire 4y ago
I wonder if firefly broods are on multi-year cycles like cicadas. Like others in this thread have said, I've seen huge firefly, erh, "blooms", 25 and 15 years ago. After the first one, and then subsequent years of not seeing such huge numbers, I thought I'd never see another one again. Unfortunately, I didn't have any chance to be out in some random field in Pennsylvania 5 years ago. They're definitely overall decreasing in numbers, though. 25 years ago was particularly big, but we still had fireflies every year after that. The last few years, I've found it pretty rare to see a firefly at all.
- mberning 4y ago
  It does seem to fluctuate from year to year.
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  >I wonder if firefly broods are on multi-year cycles like cicadas. Interesting theory
calebm 4y ago
I just moved to north Georgia recently, and I've never seen so many fireflies in my life - thousands of them. But we don't use pesticides, and I don't think my nearby neighbors do either. We also keep a good bit of grass pretty long most of the time.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >I just moved to north Georgia recently, and I've never seen so many fireflies in my life - thousands of them. They are peaking this week https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm
  - exhilaration 4y ago
    Can you explain this link a little further? It looks like there's so many fireflies at this national park that they have to grant access via lottery? That's amazing, I'm on the east coast and would drive to something like this. Is it really as awesome as I'm imagining?
    - dontbenebby 4y ago
      And posts like these are why they need a lottery, some things should be esoteric knowledge and kept offline.
      - ramesh31 4y ago
        Well, GSNP is the most heavily visited National Park in the US, so that's mostly it. There's really nothing special about this place in particular though. The whole area is lit up right now.
        dontbenebby 4y ago
        >Well, GSNP is the most heavily visited National Park in the US That's a fair point! But did people know that it's specifically known for the fireflies? :-) (I'd expect most people look at a list of the most visited and pick based on things like cost and drivability and adjacent issues, like costs of mosquito nets, but I can understand if it's literally just "yeah, in natural parks there's lots of nature, why does this suprise dontbenebby?")
everdrive 4y ago
This has certainly been my anecdotal observation as well. As with other flying interests. Another eventual loss from our world. This won’t be the last.
thedougd 4y ago
You mean, lightning bugs? { Starting a regional dialect flame war } Map showing which term (or both) are used across the United States: https://homegrown.extension.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Firefly-vs-lightning-bug-dialect-map_Homegrown-NC-State-Extension.jpg https://homegrown.extension.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021...
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  The title in my inbox mentioned that term, but I got it via the newsletter, so I don't know if everyone saw that... phrasing[1] :-) [1] The above is a very local reference to a very well known Archer meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLWrKh2fB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLWrKh2fB0 (I had a coauthor who'd make sweeping proclamations like "we do not use the word 'seminal paper' in this laboratory around the time they had to stop calling it ISIS on the show... due to the rise of ISIS, which, according to Wikipedia is " a Salafi jihadist group and former unrecognised proto-state"[1], but I'm not an expert on... natsec stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(disambiguation)
  - jvanderbot 4y ago
    What is going on in this comment? Have you had too much or too little coffee today, sir/madam?
    - rustyminnow 4y ago
      I'll bet they are interacting with hnews through some sort of 3rd party client, and meant to reply to some other thread and something got borked
      - dontbenebby 4y ago
        I used to use Reddit a lot, still adjusting to HN culture. Also, too much caffeine and no weed, so all I can do is amp up, then wait. (I looked into MMJ, but the dispensaries are pretty unprofessional, it's why I think it should be recreational, they still act like cartel members.)
cmpb 4y ago
The article mentions planting natives and leaving leaf litter for the insects to nest in. Anecdotally, that works extremely well. My neighbor always leaves his leaves under the trees (gums), and I'd noticed his yard always has a prolific firefly population. Two years ago, after I started to get interested in native plants, I started doing the same thing, and this year for the first time ever I have lightning bugs as well! I've also seen a plethora of other native bugs that I've never seen before, but that could just be due to the fact that I wasn't really very interested in them before.
- trgn 4y ago
  Yup, small conservations efforts can make a real difference. Leaving sections of our yard a little more wild, and bird and insect population went up, this includes lightning bugs, which we continue to get in abundance (we're in a reasonably urban area). I've planted milkweed, it took a few years, but now we get monarchs every year too. Jonathan Franzen wrote a great article on this that went viral (considering the topic) a few years ago https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/carbon-capture https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/carbon-capture . He basically argues that the cataclysmic worries about climate change should not paralyze us to make changes that promote local conservation, which have real tangible benefits for biodiversity on a small scale.
- beauzero 4y ago
  The farm we purchased 6+ years ago is just starting to see fireflies and bats come back. We look at dusk visible bats to gauge our bug population. We stopped spraying and are allowing fields to go back to a mixture of natives and grasses. Also started mowing strips instead of bush hogging the whole field during the summer to give shelter to animals and insects. The biggest impact we have seen is that we have more of a "bug balance". The first two years we were here the garden plants were destroyed by pests. Now we have about a 20% reduction in garden production. We do not spray or fertilize. We have also discontinued the previous owner's habit of putting chicken litter (from commercial poultry facilities) on our hay and grazing fields. We have not been able to measure that effect yet.
  - deleted 4y ago
irrational 4y ago
I was nearly 40 years old before I saw fireflies for the first time. I was sent back east to Washington DC for a conference. One evening I was wandering near one of the monuments when these tiny points of light started lighting up. I couldn’t figure out what they were until I got close enough and realized they were insects. That was also the trip where I first saw lightning, so it was a very enlightening trip ;-) My children still have never seen fireflies (or lightning), so I hope they stick around long enough till we can go east someday and see them.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  There are places without lightning? How does that work, isn't it just caused by quick warm:cold transitions and don't these happen everywhere?
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    One of the main predictors is convective available potential energy, or the integrated amount of work that the upward (positive) buoyancy force would perform on a given mass of air (called an air parcel) if it rose vertically through the entire atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convective_available_potential_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convective_available_potential... Lightning flash rate May 4, 1995 - December 31, 2013 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/85600/global-lightning-activity https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/85600/global-lightn... Global lightning strikes from January 1998 to April 2015 from the NASA/MSFC Lightning Imaging Sensor on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite. https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/lightning/images/browse/mission.png https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/lightning/images/browse/mission....
    - 411111111111111 4y ago
      It looks pretty unlikely for a person anywhere to go 40 years without witnessing lightning from looking at these visualizations, honestly. I'm living in an area which is pretty much in a dead zone on these graphs and have seen at least some lightning each year. Admittedly, most years only have pretty small bolts but that's a different story
superb-owl 4y ago
See also: https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22958614/insects-bees-butterflies-decline-extinction https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22958614/insects-bees-butt...
ortusdux 4y ago
I'm in the planning/permitting phase of building a greenhouse and an entomologist friend has agreed to help me try and raise some of fireflies. They are native to my area, but only locals over the age of 50 remember seeing them.
dukeofdoom 4y ago
I get a lot of fireflies in my backyard. I have a Trumpet vine that they like to get it on on. I tried to film some firefly sex with mixed results. Can someone recommend a lens for m4/3 thats good in low light and good for macro.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  I use an Olympus 50mm f/2 on a m43 adapter and it works great. Unusually fast for a macro.
- rpmisms 4y ago
  A fast EF macro lens with a speedbooster would probably work well.
- cm2012 4y ago
  Yeah fireflies are very hard to take pictures of, the light always looks much duller.
swayvil 4y ago
My friends and I have been noticing this for the past couple decades. Used to be, every creekbed was a river of moving lights. Now we're like, "ooh! I saw a firefly!"
- corrral 4y ago
  That and butterflies have gone from ho-hum because you're guaranteed to see hundreds every year even if you don't try, to "holy shit, I see one, everybody come look!"
  - fullstop 4y ago
    My daughter wanted to plant her own garden outside, so I made a 2x2' box for her to plant a few things in. I specifically made it small so that she could easily weed it and whatnot. She planted fennel in there, and boy did it take off. It escaped the box and now I find little sprouts of it everywhere and it smells like Italian sausage whenever I cut the grass. Anyway, it turns out that swallowtail caterpillars love fennel. Each fall I collect fennel branches with caterpillars on them and keep them in a mesh canvas container in the garage. They form their chrysalis and seemingly go into suspended animation from about October until late May / June of the next year when they emerge as butterflies. I collected 11 of them last fall, and there were still more when I had run out of room in the container. That's from a a small 2x2' square, so imagine what an entire field of fennel could do!
rootusrootus 4y ago
In my experience, it's been declining for decades. I moved to Oklahoma in the 90s, expecting to see fireflies. I saw ... one? Two? And that was it. I didn't see any significant number of fireflies until a later visit to West Virginia. But the way my grandparents used to talk about it, Oklahoma was teeming with fireflies during their youth.
- _moof 4y ago
  Fireflies need humidity (which is why you don't see any in the American West) and Oklahoma sits right on the semi-permanent atmospheric boundary that divides the humid east from the dry west. This central dry line has shifted eastward due to climate change, taking the fireflies with it. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/eint/22/5/ei-d-17-0012.1.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/eint/22/5/ei-d-17...
ezconnect 4y ago
When I was a kid, firefly was very common in our area. We use to catch them and put on jars for night camping and let them go. Now you won't find a single one of them.
30944836 4y ago
I don't know how anyone over the age of 30 could write this headline with the word "could." I know there's data behind it, and that we have to be careful not to assume things without the data but... Have they been outside in the summer, in the midwest? In the mid-1990s you could nearly read a book by the light of lightning bugs. Now's nearly dark.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Funny, the last two summers here at my rural place in southern Ontario (basically the midwest) there's been so many fireflies. We used to have them here and there, but never like this. Anecdota, but.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Seeing a lot of them this spring here in the midwest US as well.
  - myth_drannon 4y ago
    Montreal island subburbs, so many of them every summer.
- immmmmm 4y ago
  by some authors, this decline is 3 orders of magnitude faster than what is inferred from fossil records of the last extinction event. global warming might increase that by an additional 2 orders of magnitude. the good news is that it can still be partially reversed, if humanity acts quickly.
  - spiderice 4y ago
    If the partial reversal is contingent on humans acting quickly, I'm not sure that is good news.
    - immmmmm 4y ago
      let's say that this topic making it to the front page of HN is good start.
acdanger 4y ago
Just echoing what's already been said: on my parents' small Virginia farm growing up during the 90s, fields of fireflies all summer long. Now, I'm lucky to see one or two when I visit. Same story with frogs, toads, snakes, bats, etc.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I have a similar experience in the Richmond suburbs. On the upside, DC does not have as much of a mosquito problem as it used to.
- nervousvarun 4y ago
  and probably birds. the die-off is all-encompassing. except crows. somehow crows endure.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Crows, cockroaches, twinkies, and Keith Richards; the only survivors of the apocalypse.
Mildlypolite 4y ago
Could? Is that a joke? (a very cruel and bad taste joke)
DragonsBeHere 4y ago
They're still very prevalent in the southeast
- kobieyc 4y ago
  Where exactly? I want to show my daughter some and there aren't any in my state.
  - pram 4y ago
    South seems to make sense. They're in my back yard in Austin, TX. I see them every year, exactly around this time.
cm2012 4y ago
> Another way to help, he said, is to planting trees and native grasses, and to allow log and leaf litter to accumulate. > “They prefer longer grass and they like to be in the leaf litter from the leaves that have fallen from last year,” Edwards said, “That will make a much better firefly habitat.” Unfortunately in Long Island this would also make the ideal tick habitat. It's not worth the trade-off for residential property!
- efields 4y ago
  You can have both long grasses that establish and preserve natural habitats and also have places for humans and their companions to walk and play. If you have a half acre backyard and only play in the 2/3 closest to your house, mow that grass and keep it neat, but let the other 1/3 go wild and/or install habitat-building plantings. Small steps.
fanatic2pope 4y ago
I've definitely noticed a huge drop off of fireflies and I realized that this year I saw no june bugs flying around.
- cardamomo 4y ago
  I haven't seen June bugs since I was a child growing up in Wisconsin, about 20 years ago. They were never my favorite critter, but I am still troubled by their disappearance.
  - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    Still plenty of June bugs in central Kansas. They showed up mid May this year.
shireboy 4y ago
My family discovered recently that we have synchronous fireflies in our "back 40" (not really 40 acres, but a nice chunk of undeveloped land). They only go for a few weeks, but when they do, it's like someone threw Christmas tree lights all over the forest floor. Thousands of lights blinking at the exact same millisecond. Utterly amazing that such tiny organisms can synchronize over such a large area. We're doing our part to try to keep it habitable for them.
kobieyc 4y ago
I don't understand why light pollution gets so little attention in the US.
- twiddling 4y ago
  Yes this. https://www.darksky.org/ https://www.darksky.org/
- pessimizer 4y ago
  I don't think that's relevant to this article, unless you consider fireflies light pollution. My firefly stories are from the late-70s and early-80s, on the south side of Chicago, as urban as you can possibly be, and every summer night all the kids would be outside catching fireflies and letting them go. I live on the same sort of a street now, still in Chicago, and I can't remember the last time I saw a firefly. edit: my surroundings haven't gotten brighter. When I was a kid, there was literally a Sears a block away. Lousy with fireflies.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    That there were fireflies all over the brightly lit urban area, confused and unable to mate, is not inconsistent with the notion that man-made lights are hurting fireflies.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- _moof 4y ago
  Same reason noise pollution doesn't either, I reckon.
- Jill_the_Pill 4y ago
  We had them until year-before-last when the house diagonally across from us hired "Mosquito Joe" poison-spraying service. They didn't disappear with the arrival of LEDs about 5 years ago.
ElevenLathe 4y ago
In my corner of Michigan we seem to have them now while we didn't when I was a kid. Folk wisdom is that this is due to the mosquito control trucks no longer using DEET, but I have no idea if that's true. This is in a city obviously.
- jdpedrie 4y ago
  Also in Michigan, and my perception is the same. I don't remember seeing them at all in my area (fairly rural exurbs) growing up. Camping in Ohio and seeing them is a vivid memory of my childhood. Now, as an adult in more or less the same area (though much closer to the city), I see them all the time in my yard.
zabil 4y ago
During my recent visit to Virpazar (Montenegro) we saw fireflies in the fields. It was such lovely sight. The locals say it's a sign of very clean water sources.
christophilus 4y ago
Related (I think): I had a pest control salesman come to my door and explain, "We're different from your average company. Most companies just spray a little around your house to keep bugs from getting in, but we treat your entire yard." I was floored. When I explained, "We go out of our way to create insect habitat in our yard," his smile twitched and he realized he had no way of closing the sale. But I'm simply amazed such practices are legal. "Hey! How about we spray a neurotoxin all over your yard? I'm sure that won't cause any unforeseen problems."
- hunter-gatherer 4y ago
  I had a similar contact a month ago with a neighboor regarding my dandilion population, which had brought in a crazy amount of bees and other insects. Also the front yard looked pretty--just tons of yellow flowers. Anyways, he asked me if I wanted him to come over and spray my yard with some sort of stuff to kill the weeds. I just looked at him with a puzzled look and replied "You are asking me if I want you to come and spread poison all over my yard where my kids and dog play???" He realized immediately that I wasn't a lawn person, and backed off.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    Some localities, especially with HOAs, forbid what you are doing.
    - account-5 4y ago
      Out of interest how are they going to stop you from not allowing weeds/flowers to grow?
      - Loughla 4y ago
        Fines, usually. Enforcement without your consent, at your cost, is an option. They could sue you. They can place a lien against your property. Some could have you evicted. HOA's are the worst way of making sure people don't treat their property like shit. Better ways include: fostering a sense of community. Communicating with your neighbors. And finally, minding your own damned business.
beefman 4y ago
I grew up in the Lehigh Valley. I noticed this when I visited in 2016 for the first time in many years: https://twitter.com/clumma/status/1020403913592193024 https://twitter.com/clumma/status/1020403913592193024
- fullstop 4y ago
  I live there now and I have, in recent years, had a significant number of fireflies in my yard. I also end up with a decent amount of leaf litter in my yard over the winter because of a large pin-oak which drops its leaves much later than the rest of the trees.
artursapek 4y ago
RoundUp and products like it should be illegal, every time I see someone using them I want to hit them
syngrog66 4y ago
insect pops are declining period. I dont even need "data" to tell me that. I've seen it with my own eyes over decades, across everyday life experiences. I feel we're headed towards a world without bugs. And that spells apocalypse for entire ecosystems and some agriculture
timst4 4y ago
Climate also plays a part. I was just on Spruce Knob last weekend and saw lightning bugs in late May. Never in my life have I seen them before mid-June and this was at 5000 ft elevation. This disruption to their annual cycle can’t be helping numbers
planetsprite 4y ago
I'm just assuming now that the population of every animal except mosquitos is declining
- geysersam 4y ago
  Found the headline quite odd. "Could be declining" If there's any ambiguity at all, they're doing better than most species, particularly amongst flying insects.
- _moof 4y ago
  And ticks. They don't die off the way they used to because it's not as cold in the winter. Causing real problems for deer and moose.
  - myshpa 4y ago
    It's also biodiversity problem. Without predators (snakes, foxes, coyotes, owls, ...) managing rodent populations, numbers of infected ticks rise significantly. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5543215/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5543215/ https://eu.thetimesherald.com/story/sports/2017/08/17/eckert-ticks-make-you-nervous-you-need-more-coyotes/578105001/ https://eu.thetimesherald.com/story/sports/2017/08/17/eckert... "Nervous mice tend to stay home. Mice that stay home don’t run into ticks, don’t provide food for the next generation of ticks and don’t become infected with Lyme disease. Areas with the most predator activity had almost the same number of mice as areas without predators, but had one-fifth as many ticks and one-eighth as many infected ticks."
    - dontbenebby 4y ago
      >It's also biodiversity problem. >Without predators (snakes, foxes, coyotes, owls, ...) managing rodent populations, numbers of infected ticks rise significantly. One of my old townships used to pay a guy with a silenced rifle to come kill the dear once in a while, because each township banned hunting but there were wooded areas dotting throughout where deer would breed and breed then eventually run into traffic and kill people, then wander off to heal and then emerge angrier. At least turkeys just stop in the middle of the road then try to bite you if you get out and try to shoo them. (Shoo, no t. As in get out, shine a flashlight and yell, then the thing charges you as some Karen whines from her porch that you're disturbing wildlife on the way to the mall.)
lambic 4y ago
You can't take the sky from me.
nikolay 4y ago
It surely is! Back in Bulgaria as kids, there were tons of fireflies at night; now, I can't recall seeing a single one in so many years!
zhynn 4y ago
Still fireflies out here in Vermont. Please visit and/or move here full time with your family! We need more full time families out here. The fireflies really are spectacular.
8note 4y ago
Hmm. Maybe they'll show back up in Minecraft after all

232 points by dontbenebby 4y ago

> People can help with firefly conservation by avoiding pesticides, [Marten Edwards, professor of biology at Muhlenberg College] said, and turning off outdoor lights, which confuse the bugs’ mating habits. > Another way to help, he said, is to planting trees and native grasses, and to allow log and leaf litter to accumulate. > “They prefer longer grass and they like to be in the leaf litter from the leaves that have fallen from last year” …

fullstop 4y ago
I live near Muhlenberg, oddly enough, and I have a lot of fireflies in my yard. edit: Here's some that my daughter captured. Don't worry, we released them! https://i.imgur.com/1ol4d6C.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/1ol4d6C.mp4
- smcl 4y ago
  I was shocked when I saw them on holiday in Slovakia once. I really thought they were a USA or a jungle thing, had no idea we had them in Europe.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    I worked with a guy from Germany about 20 years ago, before it was as easy find this sort of information online. I asked him if they had fireflies in Germany and he kind of scoffed and told me "Of course we have them over there!" He didn't know, at the time, that they were extremely rare starting somewhere west of the Mississippi river.
    - msrenee 4y ago
      Are you saying they're rare west of the Mississippi or East of it? They were thick in the Midwest until recently.
      - fullstop 4y ago
        Somewhere west of the Mississippi. I had also read "western Kansas" was the point at which they drop off considerably.
        msrenee 4y ago
        I suppose it's west of the Mississippi, but it's a long ways west. I'd imagine it's around the 100th meridian then. That goes through the middle of Kansas and is where you start to expect to see more western species as you travel west past it and vice versa.
dontbenebby 4y ago
>People can help with firefly conservation by avoiding pesticides I remember in the 90s, you'd be walking home and every lawn pretty much had signs to not go on the grass or you'd get a chemical rash/burn and have to go to the township hospital. (After being chewed out by a series of Moms for being dumb and/or rude.) Mine family was one of the few that didn't, but mine was the parent that got cancer, it's one of the reasons I believe in universal healthcare.
- hedora 4y ago
  I've started seeing those signs again, but now they proudly proclaim that whatever they sprayed is "organic". (Same warnings about not getting near it, etc...)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
throwaway892238 4y ago
And watch where you step! Females stay on the ground and males fly around to find them. There are very few females for each male, so if you capture or kill a firefly on the ground, that has an outsized effect on their reproduction. Use red outdoor lights instead of white to prevent them from getting confused. Absolutely turn off those huge floodlights people seem to love keeping on all night.
- happimess 4y ago
  I am very grateful that I can add "don't you like fireflies?" to my list of reasons people should turn off their floodlights.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

We moved to the country 25 years ago. First summer, driving home after dark, my wife said "What's all those lights?" About 1B fireflies were flashing over a hayfield. "Fireflies!" "No, really! Fireflies are made up!" See, she grew up in the desert and thought stories about fireflies were in with fairies and elves. Anyway, haven't seen that again since. Now I know why.

fullstop 4y ago
> See, she grew up in the desert and thought stories about fireflies were in with fairies and elves. It's always cool when people visit us in the summer who have lived on the west coast their entire lives. Their first impressions of fireflies, as adults, is fun to watch. We hosted an exchange student from China, who had spent his entire life in a major city, and he expected fireflies to be hot to the touch. I still get a lot of them in my yard, but I also don't treat my lawn with anything other than what falls from the sky.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  > but I also don't treat my lawn with anything other than what falls from the sky Do people spread poison on their lawn? Why?
  - eastbound 4y ago
    For ants. Extremely polluting for water. If you take the non-lawn product right next to it, the label says (European here): “Don’t spread on lawns, in places accessible to animals or children, in places where it will be drained to common water, only spread on the concrete in front of the house where the rain doesn’t reach, in quantities (5g per meter)”. And they give you a 2kg bottle. So I guess the lawn product is quite bad too, albeit slightly better.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    In the USA, people absolutely put both herbicide and insecticide on their lawns. Here's one product that I've seen in stores: https://www.scotts.com/sites/g/files/oydgjc106/files/asset_files/49013-2%20label.pdf https://www.scotts.com/sites/g/files/oydgjc106/files/asset_f... The active ingredient here is bifenthrin, which has been (mostly) banned in the EU since 2019. This product is marketed for killing those "unsavory" bugs and promoting plant growth, but it is also extremely lethal to bees. I'm sure that my neighbors dislike the clover in my yard, but I've got bees buzzing about over here and they have a pristine-but-sterile landscape.

whalesalad 4y ago

Anecdotally I have seen a huge decrease in firefly's here in SE Michigan over the last few years. Five or so years ago you'd see hundreds of them while driving through the farm fields or sitting in your backyard enjoying a summer brewski. Last few years I hardly recall seeing any of them anywhere.

jcims 4y ago
Same story in Ohio. Used to be able to drive along pastures and see thousands of fireflies. My daughter saw some last night for the first time in quite a while. There were less than a dozen in a quarter acre area. She’s 19 and has noticed the difference. (Same with Monarch butterflies albeit on a longer timescale)
- tomrod 4y ago
  I wonder if the many polar vortexes in 2014, (2015/2017?) have reduced insect populations substantially. I remember that foxes were frozen in fields in Columbus during 2014.
  - jcims 4y ago
    That’s a great question! No idea but it gives me a glimmer of hope it’s not purely human driven.
    - omegaworks 4y ago
      The polar vortex is a symptom of the weakening of the jetstream, thought to be occurring because of warming-driven melting of the arctic ice cap. Human-driven melting.
dontbenebby 4y ago
Were they less in urban areas? I didn't see them as much when I lived in a city, but I don't know how much of that was light pollution, it's very difficult where I am to get out someplace where you could see the Milky Way without a car, and when I would I'd see a lot but "swarm" isn't the word I'd use. More like pixels blinking in a weird pattern.

UI_at_80x24 4y ago

Not just fireflys. All kinds of flying insects. I live in the Great Lakes region out in the country, and the need to clean my windshield and front license plate was a weekly requirement due to all the bug splatter from my daily commute into work. This need has plummeted in recent years. Another observation: Fish Flys They would be so thick, that I have seen snow shovels and once even a snow-plow used to clear them off the street! (I worked at a full-service gas station in my teen years, the snow shovel was necessary for that 1 week in May-June). You couldn't walk from a parking lot into a store without slipping from the sheer number that get crushed when you walk. The insect apocalypse is already here, and we are fucked.

cainxinth 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield_phenomenon
- dontbenebby 4y ago
  Thanks for the pointer, now my morning is shot as I dig through old diaries and photos rather than doing something productive. It's just a sample size of one, but by the time I got rid of my car, which I'd had through the twenty aughts, I no longer had to memorize which gas stations actually changed the windshield fluid. Maybe that's why some people have more bugs: they're coming out of the windshield fluid tanks at dodgy petrol shops whose cleaner buckets are all full of rainwater. :-) For context, I drove from Bloomington, Indiana to the Bay Area twice. First time a more northern route via Colorado, the second time a southern route through the ABQ area with a stopover at the Flamingo in Vegas, since at the time they had a valet and REALLY reasonable rooms, but I wouldn't repeat that even if they kept those amenities -- driving within Las Vegas was the scariest experience of my life. Just trying to turn right out of a gas station near the strip after having taken my tank up to full was nerve wracking. I felt safer on the 101 where I could let people overtake me and put the cruise control at 10 above the speed limit and listen to the audiobooks I had burned onto five MP3 CDs in a 5 disc changer. But very rarely did I encounter that stereotypical "SPLAT" of a bug, let alone so many I had to clean the windshield... the issue was more dust and grime.

moron4hire 4y ago

I wonder if firefly broods are on multi-year cycles like cicadas. Like others in this thread have said, I've seen huge firefly, erh, "blooms", 25 and 15 years ago. After the first one, and then subsequent years of not seeing such huge numbers, I thought I'd never see another one again. Unfortunately, I didn't have any chance to be out in some random field in Pennsylvania 5 years ago. They're definitely overall decreasing in numbers, though. 25 years ago was particularly big, but we still had fireflies every year after that. The last few years, I've found it pretty rare to see a firefly at all.

mberning 4y ago
It does seem to fluctuate from year to year.
dontbenebby 4y ago
>I wonder if firefly broods are on multi-year cycles like cicadas. Interesting theory

calebm 4y ago

I just moved to north Georgia recently, and I've never seen so many fireflies in my life - thousands of them. But we don't use pesticides, and I don't think my nearby neighbors do either. We also keep a good bit of grass pretty long most of the time.

ramesh31 4y ago
>I just moved to north Georgia recently, and I've never seen so many fireflies in my life - thousands of them. They are peaking this week https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm https://www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/nature/fireflies.htm
- exhilaration 4y ago
  Can you explain this link a little further? It looks like there's so many fireflies at this national park that they have to grant access via lottery? That's amazing, I'm on the east coast and would drive to something like this. Is it really as awesome as I'm imagining?
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    And posts like these are why they need a lottery, some things should be esoteric knowledge and kept offline.
    - ramesh31 4y ago
      Well, GSNP is the most heavily visited National Park in the US, so that's mostly it. There's really nothing special about this place in particular though. The whole area is lit up right now.
      - dontbenebby 4y ago
        >Well, GSNP is the most heavily visited National Park in the US That's a fair point! But did people know that it's specifically known for the fireflies? :-) (I'd expect most people look at a list of the most visited and pick based on things like cost and drivability and adjacent issues, like costs of mosquito nets, but I can understand if it's literally just "yeah, in natural parks there's lots of nature, why does this suprise dontbenebby?")

everdrive 4y ago

This has certainly been my anecdotal observation as well. As with other flying interests. Another eventual loss from our world. This won’t be the last.

thedougd 4y ago

You mean, lightning bugs? { Starting a regional dialect flame war } Map showing which term (or both) are used across the United States: https://homegrown.extension.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Firefly-vs-lightning-bug-dialect-map_Homegrown-NC-State-Extension.jpg https://homegrown.extension.ncsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021...

dontbenebby 4y ago
The title in my inbox mentioned that term, but I got it via the newsletter, so I don't know if everyone saw that... phrasing[1] :-) [1] The above is a very local reference to a very well known Archer meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLWrKh2fB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyLWrKh2fB0 (I had a coauthor who'd make sweeping proclamations like "we do not use the word 'seminal paper' in this laboratory around the time they had to stop calling it ISIS on the show... due to the rise of ISIS, which, according to Wikipedia is " a Salafi jihadist group and former unrecognised proto-state"[1], but I'm not an expert on... natsec stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(disambiguation)
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  What is going on in this comment? Have you had too much or too little coffee today, sir/madam?
  - rustyminnow 4y ago
    I'll bet they are interacting with hnews through some sort of 3rd party client, and meant to reply to some other thread and something got borked
    - dontbenebby 4y ago
      I used to use Reddit a lot, still adjusting to HN culture. Also, too much caffeine and no weed, so all I can do is amp up, then wait. (I looked into MMJ, but the dispensaries are pretty unprofessional, it's why I think it should be recreational, they still act like cartel members.)

cmpb 4y ago

The article mentions planting natives and leaving leaf litter for the insects to nest in. Anecdotally, that works extremely well. My neighbor always leaves his leaves under the trees (gums), and I'd noticed his yard always has a prolific firefly population. Two years ago, after I started to get interested in native plants, I started doing the same thing, and this year for the first time ever I have lightning bugs as well! I've also seen a plethora of other native bugs that I've never seen before, but that could just be due to the fact that I wasn't really very interested in them before.

trgn 4y ago
Yup, small conservations efforts can make a real difference. Leaving sections of our yard a little more wild, and bird and insect population went up, this includes lightning bugs, which we continue to get in abundance (we're in a reasonably urban area). I've planted milkweed, it took a few years, but now we get monarchs every year too. Jonathan Franzen wrote a great article on this that went viral (considering the topic) a few years ago https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/carbon-capture https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/06/carbon-capture . He basically argues that the cataclysmic worries about climate change should not paralyze us to make changes that promote local conservation, which have real tangible benefits for biodiversity on a small scale.
beauzero 4y ago
The farm we purchased 6+ years ago is just starting to see fireflies and bats come back. We look at dusk visible bats to gauge our bug population. We stopped spraying and are allowing fields to go back to a mixture of natives and grasses. Also started mowing strips instead of bush hogging the whole field during the summer to give shelter to animals and insects. The biggest impact we have seen is that we have more of a "bug balance". The first two years we were here the garden plants were destroyed by pests. Now we have about a 20% reduction in garden production. We do not spray or fertilize. We have also discontinued the previous owner's habit of putting chicken litter (from commercial poultry facilities) on our hay and grazing fields. We have not been able to measure that effect yet.
- deleted 4y ago

irrational 4y ago

I was nearly 40 years old before I saw fireflies for the first time. I was sent back east to Washington DC for a conference. One evening I was wandering near one of the monuments when these tiny points of light started lighting up. I couldn’t figure out what they were until I got close enough and realized they were insects. That was also the trip where I first saw lightning, so it was a very enlightening trip ;-) My children still have never seen fireflies (or lightning), so I hope they stick around long enough till we can go east someday and see them.

411111111111111 4y ago
There are places without lightning? How does that work, isn't it just caused by quick warm:cold transitions and don't these happen everywhere?
- orangepurple 4y ago
  One of the main predictors is convective available potential energy, or the integrated amount of work that the upward (positive) buoyancy force would perform on a given mass of air (called an air parcel) if it rose vertically through the entire atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convective_available_potential_energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convective_available_potential... Lightning flash rate May 4, 1995 - December 31, 2013 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/85600/global-lightning-activity https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/85600/global-lightn... Global lightning strikes from January 1998 to April 2015 from the NASA/MSFC Lightning Imaging Sensor on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite. https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/lightning/images/browse/mission.png https://ghrc.nsstc.nasa.gov/lightning/images/browse/mission....
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    It looks pretty unlikely for a person anywhere to go 40 years without witnessing lightning from looking at these visualizations, honestly. I'm living in an area which is pretty much in a dead zone on these graphs and have seen at least some lightning each year. Admittedly, most years only have pretty small bolts but that's a different story

superb-owl 4y ago

See also: https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22958614/insects-bees-butterflies-decline-extinction https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22958614/insects-bees-butt...

ortusdux 4y ago

I'm in the planning/permitting phase of building a greenhouse and an entomologist friend has agreed to help me try and raise some of fireflies. They are native to my area, but only locals over the age of 50 remember seeing them.

dukeofdoom 4y ago

I get a lot of fireflies in my backyard. I have a Trumpet vine that they like to get it on on. I tried to film some firefly sex with mixed results. Can someone recommend a lens for m4/3 thats good in low light and good for macro.

jeffbee 4y ago
I use an Olympus 50mm f/2 on a m43 adapter and it works great. Unusually fast for a macro.
rpmisms 4y ago
A fast EF macro lens with a speedbooster would probably work well.
cm2012 4y ago
Yeah fireflies are very hard to take pictures of, the light always looks much duller.

swayvil 4y ago

My friends and I have been noticing this for the past couple decades. Used to be, every creekbed was a river of moving lights. Now we're like, "ooh! I saw a firefly!"

corrral 4y ago
That and butterflies have gone from ho-hum because you're guaranteed to see hundreds every year even if you don't try, to "holy shit, I see one, everybody come look!"
- fullstop 4y ago
  My daughter wanted to plant her own garden outside, so I made a 2x2' box for her to plant a few things in. I specifically made it small so that she could easily weed it and whatnot. She planted fennel in there, and boy did it take off. It escaped the box and now I find little sprouts of it everywhere and it smells like Italian sausage whenever I cut the grass. Anyway, it turns out that swallowtail caterpillars love fennel. Each fall I collect fennel branches with caterpillars on them and keep them in a mesh canvas container in the garage. They form their chrysalis and seemingly go into suspended animation from about October until late May / June of the next year when they emerge as butterflies. I collected 11 of them last fall, and there were still more when I had run out of room in the container. That's from a a small 2x2' square, so imagine what an entire field of fennel could do!

rootusrootus 4y ago

In my experience, it's been declining for decades. I moved to Oklahoma in the 90s, expecting to see fireflies. I saw ... one? Two? And that was it. I didn't see any significant number of fireflies until a later visit to West Virginia. But the way my grandparents used to talk about it, Oklahoma was teeming with fireflies during their youth.

_moof 4y ago
Fireflies need humidity (which is why you don't see any in the American West) and Oklahoma sits right on the semi-permanent atmospheric boundary that divides the humid east from the dry west. This central dry line has shifted eastward due to climate change, taking the fireflies with it. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/eint/22/5/ei-d-17-0012.1.xml https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/eint/22/5/ei-d-17...

ezconnect 4y ago

When I was a kid, firefly was very common in our area. We use to catch them and put on jars for night camping and let them go. Now you won't find a single one of them.

30944836 4y ago

I don't know how anyone over the age of 30 could write this headline with the word "could." I know there's data behind it, and that we have to be careful not to assume things without the data but... Have they been outside in the summer, in the midwest? In the mid-1990s you could nearly read a book by the light of lightning bugs. Now's nearly dark.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Funny, the last two summers here at my rural place in southern Ontario (basically the midwest) there's been so many fireflies. We used to have them here and there, but never like this. Anecdota, but.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Seeing a lot of them this spring here in the midwest US as well.
- myth_drannon 4y ago
  Montreal island subburbs, so many of them every summer.
immmmmm 4y ago
by some authors, this decline is 3 orders of magnitude faster than what is inferred from fossil records of the last extinction event. global warming might increase that by an additional 2 orders of magnitude. the good news is that it can still be partially reversed, if humanity acts quickly.
- spiderice 4y ago
  If the partial reversal is contingent on humans acting quickly, I'm not sure that is good news.
  - immmmmm 4y ago
    let's say that this topic making it to the front page of HN is good start.

acdanger 4y ago

Just echoing what's already been said: on my parents' small Virginia farm growing up during the 90s, fields of fireflies all summer long. Now, I'm lucky to see one or two when I visit. Same story with frogs, toads, snakes, bats, etc.

whimsicalism 4y ago
I have a similar experience in the Richmond suburbs. On the upside, DC does not have as much of a mosquito problem as it used to.
nervousvarun 4y ago
and probably birds. the die-off is all-encompassing. except crows. somehow crows endure.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Crows, cockroaches, twinkies, and Keith Richards; the only survivors of the apocalypse.

Mildlypolite 4y ago

Could? Is that a joke? (a very cruel and bad taste joke)

DragonsBeHere 4y ago

They're still very prevalent in the southeast

kobieyc 4y ago
Where exactly? I want to show my daughter some and there aren't any in my state.
- pram 4y ago
  South seems to make sense. They're in my back yard in Austin, TX. I see them every year, exactly around this time.

cm2012 4y ago

> Another way to help, he said, is to planting trees and native grasses, and to allow log and leaf litter to accumulate. > “They prefer longer grass and they like to be in the leaf litter from the leaves that have fallen from last year,” Edwards said, “That will make a much better firefly habitat.” Unfortunately in Long Island this would also make the ideal tick habitat. It's not worth the trade-off for residential property!

efields 4y ago
You can have both long grasses that establish and preserve natural habitats and also have places for humans and their companions to walk and play. If you have a half acre backyard and only play in the 2/3 closest to your house, mow that grass and keep it neat, but let the other 1/3 go wild and/or install habitat-building plantings. Small steps.

fanatic2pope 4y ago

I've definitely noticed a huge drop off of fireflies and I realized that this year I saw no june bugs flying around.

cardamomo 4y ago
I haven't seen June bugs since I was a child growing up in Wisconsin, about 20 years ago. They were never my favorite critter, but I am still troubled by their disappearance.
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  Still plenty of June bugs in central Kansas. They showed up mid May this year.

shireboy 4y ago

My family discovered recently that we have synchronous fireflies in our "back 40" (not really 40 acres, but a nice chunk of undeveloped land). They only go for a few weeks, but when they do, it's like someone threw Christmas tree lights all over the forest floor. Thousands of lights blinking at the exact same millisecond. Utterly amazing that such tiny organisms can synchronize over such a large area. We're doing our part to try to keep it habitable for them.

kobieyc 4y ago

I don't understand why light pollution gets so little attention in the US.

twiddling 4y ago
Yes this. https://www.darksky.org/ https://www.darksky.org/
pessimizer 4y ago
I don't think that's relevant to this article, unless you consider fireflies light pollution. My firefly stories are from the late-70s and early-80s, on the south side of Chicago, as urban as you can possibly be, and every summer night all the kids would be outside catching fireflies and letting them go. I live on the same sort of a street now, still in Chicago, and I can't remember the last time I saw a firefly. edit: my surroundings haven't gotten brighter. When I was a kid, there was literally a Sears a block away. Lousy with fireflies.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  That there were fireflies all over the brightly lit urban area, confused and unable to mate, is not inconsistent with the notion that man-made lights are hurting fireflies.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
_moof 4y ago
Same reason noise pollution doesn't either, I reckon.
Jill_the_Pill 4y ago
We had them until year-before-last when the house diagonally across from us hired "Mosquito Joe" poison-spraying service. They didn't disappear with the arrival of LEDs about 5 years ago.

ElevenLathe 4y ago

In my corner of Michigan we seem to have them now while we didn't when I was a kid. Folk wisdom is that this is due to the mosquito control trucks no longer using DEET, but I have no idea if that's true. This is in a city obviously.

jdpedrie 4y ago
Also in Michigan, and my perception is the same. I don't remember seeing them at all in my area (fairly rural exurbs) growing up. Camping in Ohio and seeing them is a vivid memory of my childhood. Now, as an adult in more or less the same area (though much closer to the city), I see them all the time in my yard.

zabil 4y ago

During my recent visit to Virpazar (Montenegro) we saw fireflies in the fields. It was such lovely sight. The locals say it's a sign of very clean water sources.

christophilus 4y ago

Related (I think): I had a pest control salesman come to my door and explain, "We're different from your average company. Most companies just spray a little around your house to keep bugs from getting in, but we treat your entire yard." I was floored. When I explained, "We go out of our way to create insect habitat in our yard," his smile twitched and he realized he had no way of closing the sale. But I'm simply amazed such practices are legal. "Hey! How about we spray a neurotoxin all over your yard? I'm sure that won't cause any unforeseen problems."

hunter-gatherer 4y ago
I had a similar contact a month ago with a neighboor regarding my dandilion population, which had brought in a crazy amount of bees and other insects. Also the front yard looked pretty--just tons of yellow flowers. Anyways, he asked me if I wanted him to come over and spray my yard with some sort of stuff to kill the weeds. I just looked at him with a puzzled look and replied "You are asking me if I want you to come and spread poison all over my yard where my kids and dog play???" He realized immediately that I wasn't a lawn person, and backed off.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  Some localities, especially with HOAs, forbid what you are doing.
  - account-5 4y ago
    Out of interest how are they going to stop you from not allowing weeds/flowers to grow?
    - Loughla 4y ago
      Fines, usually. Enforcement without your consent, at your cost, is an option. They could sue you. They can place a lien against your property. Some could have you evicted. HOA's are the worst way of making sure people don't treat their property like shit. Better ways include: fostering a sense of community. Communicating with your neighbors. And finally, minding your own damned business.

beefman 4y ago

I grew up in the Lehigh Valley. I noticed this when I visited in 2016 for the first time in many years: https://twitter.com/clumma/status/1020403913592193024 https://twitter.com/clumma/status/1020403913592193024

fullstop 4y ago
I live there now and I have, in recent years, had a significant number of fireflies in my yard. I also end up with a decent amount of leaf litter in my yard over the winter because of a large pin-oak which drops its leaves much later than the rest of the trees.

artursapek 4y ago

RoundUp and products like it should be illegal, every time I see someone using them I want to hit them

syngrog66 4y ago

insect pops are declining period. I dont even need "data" to tell me that. I've seen it with my own eyes over decades, across everyday life experiences. I feel we're headed towards a world without bugs. And that spells apocalypse for entire ecosystems and some agriculture

timst4 4y ago

Climate also plays a part. I was just on Spruce Knob last weekend and saw lightning bugs in late May. Never in my life have I seen them before mid-June and this was at 5000 ft elevation. This disruption to their annual cycle can’t be helping numbers

planetsprite 4y ago

I'm just assuming now that the population of every animal except mosquitos is declining

geysersam 4y ago
Found the headline quite odd. "Could be declining" If there's any ambiguity at all, they're doing better than most species, particularly amongst flying insects.
_moof 4y ago
And ticks. They don't die off the way they used to because it's not as cold in the winter. Causing real problems for deer and moose.
- myshpa 4y ago
  It's also biodiversity problem. Without predators (snakes, foxes, coyotes, owls, ...) managing rodent populations, numbers of infected ticks rise significantly. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5543215/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5543215/ https://eu.thetimesherald.com/story/sports/2017/08/17/eckert-ticks-make-you-nervous-you-need-more-coyotes/578105001/ https://eu.thetimesherald.com/story/sports/2017/08/17/eckert... "Nervous mice tend to stay home. Mice that stay home don’t run into ticks, don’t provide food for the next generation of ticks and don’t become infected with Lyme disease. Areas with the most predator activity had almost the same number of mice as areas without predators, but had one-fifth as many ticks and one-eighth as many infected ticks."
  - dontbenebby 4y ago
    >It's also biodiversity problem. >Without predators (snakes, foxes, coyotes, owls, ...) managing rodent populations, numbers of infected ticks rise significantly. One of my old townships used to pay a guy with a silenced rifle to come kill the dear once in a while, because each township banned hunting but there were wooded areas dotting throughout where deer would breed and breed then eventually run into traffic and kill people, then wander off to heal and then emerge angrier. At least turkeys just stop in the middle of the road then try to bite you if you get out and try to shoo them. (Shoo, no t. As in get out, shine a flashlight and yell, then the thing charges you as some Karen whines from her porch that you're disturbing wildlife on the way to the mall.)

lambic 4y ago

You can't take the sky from me.

nikolay 4y ago

It surely is! Back in Bulgaria as kids, there were tons of fireflies at night; now, I can't recall seeing a single one in so many years!

zhynn 4y ago

Still fireflies out here in Vermont. Please visit and/or move here full time with your family! We need more full time families out here. The fireflies really are spectacular.

8note 4y ago

Hmm. Maybe they'll show back up in Minecraft after all