An examination of lost firefly species of the US and Canada (journaloflostspecies.org)

118 pointsby bryanrasmussen4 days ago37 comments

VonGuard 4 hours ago

DO NOT RAKE YOUR LAWNS.

This is why we don't have fireflys anymore. They were everywhere growing up. They lay eggs on the bottoms of fallen leaves. HOA's demand you rake your leaves. This kills the firefly.

esikich 4 hours ago

That's easy to say but anyone with a lawn is typically bound by local ordinances. I don't even live in a particularly nice area and I got a warning citation for some cool looking thistle I decided to let grow this year.

Razengan 4 hours ago

> I got a warning citation for some cool looking thistle

What the hell is this dystopia really.. oh American suburbs

CalRobert an hour ago

Could be lots of places.

darknavi 3 hours ago

Noxious weed probably? They can be harmful to local ecology.

CalRobert an hour ago

Also undisturbed grass is great for ground nesting birds! We saw them return when we left a field fallow in Ireland. Less helpful in suburbia admittedly

strangattractor 9 hours ago

As kid in Virginia in the 60s Summer evenings were magical - Lightening Bug galore. Then mosquito spraying began. The mosquitos remained - Lightening Bugs not so much:(

trollbridge 7 hours ago

Or even a kid in the 90s and 2000s. The lightning bugs are mostly gone.

My kids think it's a big deal when they see one, and we live in a rural area with very little spraying happening.

boringg 6 hours ago

Still have them galore up north where I am. Had at least a couple thousand last summer one night -- it was very cool.

derwiki 5 hours ago

Whereabouts?

throwAway30303 10 hours ago

Nice to see that "swatting with badminton rackets" isn't endangering them enough to make the article. As someone who was raised in a firefly-dense rural area, let me tell you, the thrill of the bioluminescent sparks is the closest I got to cocaine as a kid.

jodacola 10 hours ago

I was born in and spent most of my life in the bay area before moving to Kansas City over 10 years ago (long story).

Seeing fireflies for the first time, in my 30s, was (and still is) magical.

throwAway30303 10 hours ago

They have blue ones in North Carolina! Fascinating.

ProllyInfamous 10 hours ago

Here in SE Tennessee, we have a few areas with the "congregating pulses" type (i.e. they all blink [mostly] together). But they're all green, here =D

You sound remorseful (from your youthful indiscretions); but out of curiosity... does the "glow" splat when thwacked (with a tennis racket)? or does it immediately extinguish?

throwAway30303 9 hours ago

It was the hellish sort of destructive behavior unique to teenage boys. Very, very fun in its own way. But, alas, perhaps I’m still paying back the universe in some way.

The bioluminescence stays lit for some time. For example, you can paint your face with it. With the rackets, they splatter like fireworks.

ProllyInfamous 9 hours ago

>With the rackets, they splatter like fireworks.

[looks at tennis racket nervously]

"I'm an adult. I will not record this incredibly-sounding phenomenon for the YouTuby viewies..."

I'll just take your word for it.

----

I am forty-something, but I still always cringe when I think about that sappling I destroyed (recklessly, with my teenage-swung crowbar), just to show off to some girl...

neuroelectron 6 hours ago

I thought I saw red one in the deep Pennsylvania Woods and I would definitely see blue ones occasionally.

delichon 8 hours ago

In this rural area the closest kids get to cocaine is methamphetamine.

vibrio an hour ago

This comment rings in my ears like a gunshot. I wish reality didn’t make it so poetic.

bob1029 2 hours ago

30 years ago we caught them in glass jars. They were so dense in rural Missouri that you could catch several at a time by swinging an open container through the air.

hizlikovboy27 3 hours ago

we should teach our children to live as friends with insects and other living creatures. When we were kids,we weren't this aware of it. but now I hope its time to act consciously and take action.

bob1029 2 hours ago

Don't forget about the arachnids.

Spiders are like senior members of nature's janitorial staff. I've seen them convert a periodic trail of ants into a mass grave within a few days.

Everyone I know who hires an exterminator has significantly worse issues than the occasional spider sighting. I don't actively encourage them but I also don't try to clean their homes out aggressively. I'll do yard work around them (they get until next time to move). Arachnids are unusually intelligent given their size and often seem to get the hint.

Razengan 10 hours ago

First we lost the stars in the sky now we lost the stars on Earth

derwiki 5 hours ago

We’re always losing things, eg carrier pigeons.

Razengan 4 hours ago

It's depressing to imagine people a couple decades from now spending their entire lives inside concrete jungles (as some already do now)

seeing only manufactured wonders, with no longing for what's beyond

anonzzzies 5 hours ago

Where I live the stars are still there but the fireflies are gone. Such a shame.

Razengan 4 hours ago

A city or town with no haze or light pollution? Where is that magical place?

While traveling even in rural parts of less-developed countries, there was a glow in the sky from nearby cities. When opening the curtains the sky was brighter than my room in the middle of the night!

CalRobert an hour ago

But wet have lots of cool up lighting to highlight your McMansion at 3AM!

Modified3019 10 hours ago

I have too many hobbies and not nearly enough time or space, but I’ve always been interested in raising glowworms at some point.

This channel has some fairly unique practical information on raising them (and some other things as well) for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/@PeppersnGlowworms/playlists

jodacola 10 hours ago

My knee-jerk reaction to this was, "sigh, more extinct species" - however, "lost species" in this context, as I learned from this paper, means:

> Herein, we define ‘lost species’ as those with no confirmed observation record within the past decade.

Confirmed from another source [0], which attempts to formalize the language (not that long ago!).

[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/lost-bu...

watersb 8 hours ago

Seasonal reminder: many insect species need the shelter of fallen leaves now and until springtime.

Modern lawn-care practices amount to devastating habitat loss. You can learn more about good choices for your area from your local county extension office.

If your office has been defunded, you can also try your friendly neighborhood public librarian.

SoftTalker 8 hours ago

But if you let the fallen leaves sit on your lawn all winter they are a matted wet mess in the spring and they kill your lawn. I blow mine to wooded areas at the edges of my property

owlninja 7 hours ago

And mosquito city during the fall here in Texas

smt88 6 hours ago

That’s just revealing how strange and unnatural lawns are. I switched to low-growing native plants and have been very happy with almost zero maintenance.

lukan 4 hours ago

Well, what is natural and where is the line?

We domisticated grazing animals since a while in large numbers, the smaller ones do produce something like a lawn. And soft grass is just really nice to play around with the kids. So I also simply keep bushes and tree spots for the leaves and insects.

smt88 2 hours ago

It’s not really a complicated philosophical question.

Lawns aren’t native to your area. That type of grass didn’t evolve there, and it didn’t evolve to being trimmed short. That’s why it doesn’t produce seeds and why it’s killed by leaves.

CalRobert an hour ago

But grass is annoying and killing it is good