![]() They like areas with a lot of trees, dense vegetation, and tall grass as well as damp areas around ponds, streams, and bogs. The largest of them can get up to about an inch long. They are part of a group of over 2,000 species of glowing bugs, found in North America, Europe, and Asia. Most scientists say lots of factors, not just one, caused the apparent decline in flying insects. Lightning bugs are also known as fireflies. "We just need to find out how widespread the phenomenon is." The Suspects "It's clearly not a German thing," said University of Connecticut entomologist David Wagner, who has chronicled declines in moth populations in the northeastern United States. ![]() He studied flies in a few spots in remote Greenland and noticed an 80 percent drop in numbers since 1996. It turns out there are a whole bunch of species of lightning bugs. Individual studies aren't convincing in themselves, "but the sheer accumulated weight of evidence seems to be shifting" to show a problem, she said.Īfter the German study, countries started asking if they have similar problems, said ecologist Toke Thomas Hoye of Aarhus University in Denmark. Traditional fireflies are also out during daylight hours, but the males of most North American species are usually hiding in the long grass, waiting to come out during warm summer evenings to attract female fireflies with their pulsating flashes of light. The lack of older data makes it "unclear to what degree we're experiencing an arthropocalypse," said University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum. The reasons, according to the internet, include habitat destruction and degradation, pesticides, light pollution, poor water quality, invasive species. "We don't know how much we're losing if we don't know how much we have," said University of Hawaii entomologist Helen Spafford.
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