If you’re in the older generation, you’ve had the good fortune to experience nature before overpopulation and overdevelopment crippled it. That was back when fruit was allowed to ripen on the tree, resulting in juicy, sun-kissed, tasty treats instead of the wooden facsimiles we buy at the supermarket today. In the animal world, you could expect an abundance of butterflies and a spectacular display of fireflies—or June bugs as they were also known– as summer approached. Now these symbols of a healthy environment are all in danger.
When was the last time you saw a “lightning bug”—still another name for the firefly– winking at you in the summer dusk?
Chances are that it wasn’t anytime recently. That’s because fireflies are victims of the broader insect apocalypse impacting ecosystems across the globe. Insects like flies, moths, bees, and beetles are also affected. Sadly, butterflies, one of nature’s works of art, are as well.
While scientific studies have only been done for the past few years, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence in areas that were once full of fireflies—and much of it goes back generations. Some areas once had so many fireflies that they profited from running firefly tours in marshes and forests—but since then, the number of fireflies has dwindled dramatically.
Joe Cicero, now retired, is an entomologist who has made studying the June bug his life’s work, and he has fond recollections of his childhood. But Cicero sadly notes that now they are, “Down to just a trivial few relative to the big population they had back then.”
Nearly 1 in 3 firefly species in the United States and Canada may be threatened with extinction, firefly experts estimate in a recent comprehensive assessment. Surveys show that the situation is just as grave across the globe.
What’s worse is that the fireflies are just the alarm bell that warns “that the habitat is in trouble,” Cicero said.
In so many spots where scientists look, insects of all sorts are vanishing, with potentially disastrous results. Populations are plunging in Germany and the Netherlands, in Puerto Rico and the American West, leading to fears of a potential-though-still hotly debated “bugapocalypse,” which could unravel food webs for birds and other insect-eating animals and cause calamity for farmers who need pollinators to grow crops.
Sara Lewis, a Tufts University biologist and author of “Silent Sparks: The Wondrous World of Fireflies”, says that the firefly is “the gateway bug for illuminating the need to protect” the rest of the natural world.
To understand the threats to fireflies, we need to understand their life cycle.
Fireflies spend the vast majority of their lives in their larval state, roaming the dirt to consume snails, worms and other soft-bodied grub several times their size. They may be the beloved symbol of summer, but they are also voracious eaters.
But much of the swampy soil young fireflies need to thrive is increasingly being bulldozed for golf courses, suburban subdivisions and other types of development, making habitat loss a top threat. As their habitat shrinks, so do their populations. Then too, more housing and golf courses means more pesticides—another grave threat.
When the time is right in the spring, juvenile fireflies seek a spot to pupate. Much like how a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, a young firefly rearranges its body to turn into an adult. Then they take flight.
The adults live for only a few weeks – with one thing on their minds. Fireflies flicker at each other not to delight children and adults alike, but to find their mates. The spectacle has been called “one big bug orgy”; and mating in the dark isn’t always easy. It’s being made even harder by the ubiquitous artificial light that disrupts their environment even more; that is, light pollution.
The good news, such as it is, is that not every type of firefly is in peril. The big dipper firefly, for example, does not seem to mind modern streetlights. They are plentiful in well-lit corners of Central Park in New York.
Despite the threat of extinction, no firefly species is protected under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering petitions to safeguard five of the species.
It’s not easy to reverse the conditions that led to their endangerment: loss of habitat, pesticides and light pollution. But experts do have some advice: Let the grass grow, leave parts of your lawn unmowed, and minimize lights at night. To reduce light pollution, only turn on outdoor lighting when you’re using it. And consider installing lights with motion sensors and timers.
We may not be able to go back to the spectacle we knew as children, but we can still safeguard the firefly populations that we have.
