Lightning bugs

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.
- Stopped mowing our farm, lightning bugs are back in swarms. It's great.
- 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.

I haven't seen any of these bad boys in probably over a decade. They used to be all over the place.
- 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.
  If you go to rural areas they're still around.
  
  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.
- Yeah probably went extinct or something.
  insert doomer wojak

Throughout my millennial decades they've gone from indigenous to childhood memories :(.
- We work so hard to destroy local plants to build artificial backyards, and now our parents don't know why they don't see them anymore :(
  
  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.
  
  Eh, they're going to be surprised when the "it's over" phase comes with retribution anyways.
- There are still some areas where they are common, they're just more hidden now because the species is adverse to light pollution I'm pretty sure.

lightning bugs were cool.
Haven't seen em in a while now that i think about it.
- Because we killed them all. Pesticides, climate change, lawns... They're dying out along with basically all bugs.
  
  I have billions in my lawn. Just plant locals (guerilla style) and they'll be back.
  
  humans ruin everything.
  
  we killed them all
  they're dying out
  which is it?

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.

Firefly vs lightning bug
I've always called them fireflies growing up but it seems like that's dependent on where you grew up
- This content is not available in your country/region.
  
  Like the bugs 😭
  
  Curious what country, article is from Rochester NY it seems
- Wow I would not believe my eyes...
  
  You would not believe your eyes
  If ten million lightning bugs
  'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs
  From ten thousand fireflies
- Wow, didn't know they were poisonous

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're also a water quality indicator.
  
  Funny, so is your mom

They were everywhere in my old home state. I have not seen them in decades now. I miss them.
- They are much less common now. Another ill-communicated effect of climate change
  
  Not climate change, artificial illumination. As humanity spreads, it destroys more and more....
  
  I think over spraying pesticides also harmed their numbers.
- 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.
  
  Attracting rodents with tall grass saves me money in cat food

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.

Lightning bug's range is pretty wide (they can be found on every continent except Antarctica), but there are much less of them than there use to be.
As a child in the 90s, I would see so many of them flickering. But now, like many other bugs, they are dying off.
- I've never seen one, though a quick online search shows that some species of firefly do exist in my small country. I guess I've just never been out in the right kind of nature at night.
  I've seen them hundreds of times in movies and TV shows though, they're real common in American media.
  
  the ones in american media tend to fly while glowing, no? i've only ever seen the quietly sit on a leaf and flash in patterns type.
- Yeah I remember seeing so many of them it was like stars near the ground. These days I rarely see more than I could count on one hand at once.
  The impoverished natural world being left to our children is something that often makes me sad.

this year is a huge one for these guys in my area. walking around at dusk has been an amazing light show. i feel blessed
- You are! They're one of the very few sources of magic left in this world.

Truly magical critters. Used to be at Gran's farm as a kid and catch em in your hands. Fields were just covered in em. Great memories.
Haven't been back in ages... I wonder how it's looking these days.
- Dark
  
  Unfortunately, good chance of that. :l
- Maybe let that one stay a memory unless Gran's still there and should be visited, I have an inkling it's going to be disappointing
  
  Still ought to visit Uncle & Aunt who currently reside there, but yeah news of dwindling numbers is a bummer for sure...

I love when people find out about stuff that delights them ^^

Only a few years ago, I found fireflies living near me. I never knew they existed in Europe.
Government decided to level their habitat though. They're building a wildlife rescue center, ironically.

Honestly I thought they were fictional creatures until I was about 16 and finally saw one. Never seen them again though.

They used to be indigenous where I lived. Now they are not. I suppose they cannot live on concrete, who would have thought...

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 remember those as a kid! Total tease

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
- Yep turns out frequent use of pesticides kills the bugs we like just as well as the bugs we don’t like :/

They're supposed to be native in California but I've never seen one. :(
I've never seen one in those bug museum things (like an aviary for bugs; what are they called?) either.
- Back in 99 they used to show up every summer night in the East Coast states.

Driving at 60mph through giant swarms is like traveling at warp speed.

In a another life those were everywhere. Now notsomuch
- It's the same life, we just ended it
  
  and we can bring it back: stop using pesticides, replace your lawns with native plants, stop driving, and stop buying food from industrial farms.

I miss them. 😭🥹

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.