Their decline has been so sad. I moved somewhere with fireflies in 2007. The first year they were everywhere. The second year less so and they were completely gone by 2010. I always tried to leave longer grassy areas for them but they were just... gone. It was so so so sad. I didn't grow up with them and that first summer was enchanted and magical.
I have great memories of walking down the road on a hot night with thousands of slowly blinking balls of light. The person who lives in that place now probably doesn't even know that fireflies are supposed to be in the area.
Lightning bugs have a multi-year lifecycle that includes living in fallen leaf matter, hunting for other bugs, before emerging in like 2-3 years. So they need places that don't haul away all of the fallen leaves/plant matter or use broad spectrum pesticides.
I've always kept all the leaves in rows along our fences for the lightning bugs to live in, which is also popular with the song birds hunting for bugs. That and don't do the broad pesticide treatments.
It seems insane to me that Americans use pesticides on their own garden and lawn. Do you not walk on there? have your kids and pets play outside? What are you even trying to kill with the poison?
Yeah, mulching your leaves instead of bagging them is really what makes a difference for fireflies. And since suburbanization and HOAs often require (or at least heavily encourage) bagging leaves, it means the fireflies have nowhere to mature.
I haven't seen a firefly since I was a small child. I've never really thought about them before, but it is kind of sad not seeing them. Generally I hate bugs, but fireflies are pretty.
We used to catch them in jars as kids growing up in rural south. Tired to see who could get the most, then release them and watch them all make a show.
They like to live in piles of dead leaves. Between suburban neighborhoods having landscapers haul away yard waste and using pesticides to keep those lawns perfect, they have nowhere to live.
I'm not a lazy ass, I'm just doing my part for the pollinators and insect populations. By being a lazy ass and not giving a shit about yards beyond what in legally required to.
While we should absolutely use our backyards to make some space for nature, there's going on more than this. Even in nature reserves, insect counts seem to be going down. Last I heard, it's still not entirely clear what's going on, but probably related to certain types of pesticides.
We used to have thousands of these in my backyard as a kid every summer. Now I rarely see them. We've done a great job at destroying our ecosystems in record time. We're so fucked
The powers that be want us to go straight from "let's vote harder" to "it's over". There's a huge range of fucked we can be - if what is lost is worth crying over, then what's left is worth fighting over.
I was pretty freaked out the first time I saw fireflies while stationed in the South. At first I thought I was hallucinating. Then I wondered if I was seeing aliens or something. Finally one got close to my face and I snatched it out of the air. When I opened my hand there was a little bug sitting there blinking, and I was amazed. They're honestly the coolest creatures I've ever seen on this earth.
Lightning bugs are really cool! Where I live, people are usually surprised to find out that there are dozens of species native to the region.
A few years ago, I went on a trip to a different part of the US and they had a species of lightning bug where they all flash synchronously. Instead of flying around the yard, blinking seemingly at random like all the lightning bugs I'd ever seen up to that point, the synchronous ones crawled around in the bushes and trees and then when they flashed, they all flashed at the same time. It was super cool to see.
Another thing I've noticed about adult lightning bugs is that the populations can vary greatly from year to year around here. We might have a year or two with large numbers of them each night during the warmest parts of the year, then a year where they are few and far between.
They thrive if you don't use pesticides and leaf blowers. I have fireflies where I live in CT. Bonus points for letting the grass grow, though that may also attract rodents and look unsightly to the neighbors.
I was into my 30's by the time I discovered fireflies were real. I was well aware there were bioluminescent creatures in the world but I thought fireflies just reflected light until I moved to the Midwest. They are an amazing sight when you've never seen them before.
I live in rural Oklahoma and they are gonna start popping off in my back yard any week now. I love sitting in my yard on a warm summer night watching them come in by the hundreds. I heard they are becoming endangered though idk
One of the more annoying things about living in Florida is that we have closely related animals that are nearly identical, but they don't have glow-butts. (At least not down in the bottom half of the state.)
I'll wait for someone from like Lakeland to say they have them.
I traveled around Central Florida quite a bit as a kid, I've never seen the Midwest style fireflies. I have seen a glowy luminescent bug in Florida though, it was like a glow stick green and had a constant light rather than a flash. Super weird looking.
I heard a story that back in the 80s there were some foreign diamond salesmen that came in around the 4th of July. I forget their nationality, but they had never seen fireflies before. They got invited to a fireworks display, and someone there showed them that when you squish a firefly it leaves a glowing smear.
Anyway they scurry off to look at fireflies for a while, everyone else watches the fireworks. No one really pays them any mind until they come back to the crowded area, and suddenly everyone is noticing that they’ve given themselves glowing war-paint.
I wanna say they were Japanese, but google says there are fireflies in Japan. Maybe they were just real goofy guys. Either way it’s an insane energy to bring to a party and I think about it a lot.