Fireflies: Elusive And Magical ––

Looking For Lightning Bugs

By Dottie Evans

Ask anyone to recall fondest memories of summers growing up and you might get a wide variety of replies encompassing a full range of early childhood experiences. These include going barefoot in newly mowed grass, swimming in a local pond, or riding a bike all over town with a gang of good friends.

Add to the list staying up way past bedtime to play Clue or Monopoly and eating homemade ice cream on the back porch until one’s stomach is full to aching.

 Mention another popular childhood activity –– chasing fireflies –– and the memories are tinged with magic.

“Often in evening, I would sit with my father on the wide verandah of my parents’ summer place and watch the tiny flashing stars of fireflies rise from the hayfields surrounding the house,” writes John Hanson Mitchell in his book, A Field Guide to Your Own Back Yard, (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, N.Y., 1985).

“One of the requirements of a good firefly field is long grass. If you have a perfectly trimmed lawn, you may not have so many [fireflies]. I have a meadow on the north side of my house that I purposely leave uncut through June in order to encourage firefly populations,” Mr Mitchell adds.

Then he mentions that “it may be a replay of an old script,” but he still likes to sit out on the back porch and watch the lightning bugs rise over the meadow while he tells his own children stories about fireflies.

Fascinating Beetles

Perhaps the luckiest people are those who managed to make a career out of doing what they liked best when they were young. One such person is Connecticut State Department of Agriculture entomologist Louis Magnarelli, who has not forgotten his childhood spent chasing bugs and butterflies, and watching fireflies.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon. People are mesmerized by fireflies. Poems and songs have been written about them. The other night I saw a couple out my bedroom window,” Mr Magnarelli said.

“When they’re numerous and they’re all out there doing it, it’s impressive. And it’s fun,” he added, referring to the on-again, off-again, seemingly random blinking light show that a mass of fireflies can put on when darkness falls.

 Mr Magnarelli explained that bioluminescent signals –– the flashing patterns given off by the male fireflies — are actually mating calls by one of the more than 2,000 species of flying beetle named Lampyridae [Latin for “shining fire”].

They are seeking to attract female fireflies, he said, which are waiting on the ground and may also be emitting a flashing signal. Most fireflies are found east of the Mississippi River, he added.

This bioluminescence of fireflies is a “cold light,” he added, and it is produced by a specialized organ on the underside of the abdomen. This is especially interesting because it is so efficient; there is no heat generated, only light. He then recalled being a child and cupping his hands around a captured firefly, watching its glow through his fingers.

Another grown-up who still delights in firefly displays is Donna Rose Manwaring, office manager and naturalist at Bent of the River Audubon Center, a 650-acre nature preserve located along the Pomperaug River in Southbury.

“They were spectacular this week out in the meadow,” Ms Manwaring said.

“Some were high in the trees, some were down low. Some flew over the grass and at the edges. There were some long blinks and some short ones. I’ve noticed they always like to stay along the shrubby edges,” she noted.

To Spray Or Not To Spray

Invariably during a discussion about fireflies and childhood, the topic comes up about numbers and today’s changed environment.

 Are there as many fireflies now as there were back then? Does memory deceive, or did there used to be a whole lot more when we were young?

 From the state entomologist’s point of view, the answer is not clear.

“Insect populations vary from year to year. You have to look at what they’re eating as larvae. That’s what is controlling the numbers,” Mr Magnarelli said.

Firefly larvae apparently live underground for a year or two feeding on grubs and tiny snails, before they emerge during their third year of life to fly as beetles for two weeks, mate, lay eggs and die.

So what, one wonders, might the spraying of insecticides or pesticides do, not only to the insects themselves, but to the larvae and their food sources, the grubs.

“No one really knows,” Mr Magnarelli said.

“It’s a sure thing that Sevin, which is used for [Lyme] tick control, is detrimental to bees, which is why spraying is carried out after sundown when the bees have gone back to the hive.

“It’s worthy of study, perhaps in a university situation. We don’t do widespread spraying in Connecticut,” he added, “unless there is a health emergency. But a chemical insecticide in a back yard could definitely kill these beetles or the grubs.”

Mr Magnarelli said that the bulk of his time is spent studying Lyme disease-bearing ticks, because “that’s what people are worried about these days. We’re in an age of accountability and you have to justify what you’re doing,” he added.

Ms Manwaring at the Audubon Center agrees that any form of grub control in suburban lawns is probably going to kill the firefly larvae. And despite the Lyme disease problem, she decries any broad-spectrum spraying carried out on public or private land.

“I was disappointed to read they were spraying at the schools. The kids are getting it [the ticks that carry Lyme disease] at home. If the school nurse is pulling a tick off a kid, he got it at home,” she said.

Turn Off Those Lights

Both the state entomologist and the Audubon naturalist agreed that whether or not to spray private property with insecticides was a personal decision.

But there were other steps homeowners might take if they wanted to create a haven for fireflies on their own property. They could adopt a less manicured approach to their lawns, they could allow underbrush and low-hanging tree branches to remain undisturbed in certain areas.

“If you have a corner of the yard where you can let the grass grow tall, do that. Annual rye grass is pretty,” Ms Manwaring suggested.

Furthermore, if possible, turn off the lights. House lights, landscape lights, car lights, neighborhood street lights, city lights, they all contribute to light pollution, Mr Magnarelli said, and we do not know whether these lights might even deter these fireflies, which are really nocturnal flying beetles, from entering our immediate environment. After all, they need darkness for their signals to be effective.

 “If you have a lot of street lights, you’re not going to see them,” Mr Magnarelli warned. Go to a park or a nearby meadow where there are not so many lights, he said.

Then he recalled how dark the nights of childhood seemed, in memory if not in actuality.

“It’s very possible that ambient light from many sources has so pervaded our neighborhoods today that we just don’t see the fireflies like we used to,” he said.

Perhaps it was something about childhood itself –– that time when anything seemed possible and there was no future or past. When a million stars and a million fireflies could fill the darkest night and each one of us was the center of his or her own universe.