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  • Fireflies as Gateway Bugs to Restitch the Suburban Fringe
  • Sara Lewis (bio)

Fireflies are glow-in-the-dark, charismatic mini-fauna belonging to the beetle family Lampyridae. Encompassing over 2200 species sprinkled across the globe, their dazzling night-time displays have enchanted human beings for millennia. They share some kinship with the soldier beetles (family Cantharidae), a group of primarily day-flying, conspicuous insects whose adults feed on pollen, nectar, and other plant-feeding insects. In recent years, measurable declines among many insect groups have been attributed to the disappearance of suitable habitat where all insect life stages can thrive.

Using fireflies as a gateway bug, the proposed two-part restoration design focuses on creating habitat for these beetles across a mosaic of residential yards in a suburban neighborhood and within a public park. I applaud these authors for their thoughtful and creative plan to create and restore habitat for these two highly conspicuous beetle families, which visitors can enjoy during both day and night. By focusing the attention of city dwellers on these flagship groups, this project will highlight the urgent need for broader insect conservation. Through interpretative displays, visitors may come to appreciate not only fireflies' signature ability to spark wonder, but also the essential ecological services (e.g. pollination, food web links, decomposition) provided by insects more broadly.

The project's location adjacent to the Middlesex Fells Reservation and along the Mystic River in Medford, Massachusetts is also quite propitious. Middlesex Fells, protected since the late 19th century and now managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, is a valuable swath of public land (currently 890 ha) with an active and well-organized local advocacy group to help enhance public engagement. Additional project support would be available through ecologists at Tufts University, an institution that has actively engaged in local environmental and conservation initiatives for many years. Also quite admirable is this project's emphasis on community engagement, challenging suburban residents to devote one-third of their backyard space to provide insect habitat, and echoing the 30 × 30 biodiversity initiative aimed at protecting 30% of Earth's land and ocean areas by 2030.

To ensure a successful firefly restoration project, there are some additional things to consider. Fireflies and soldier beetles hail from two distinct families (Lampyridae vs. Cantharidae) and differ in several key features of their life cycles and respective ecological niches. Because of this, a habitat restoration plan designed for one group might not be entirely suitable for the other. Even within fireflies there is a fair bit of ecological and lifestyle diversity. For instance, New England is home to 20 or so different flashing firefly species with distinct ecological requirements. Some are restricted to freshwater wetlands, while others live in open grasslands or forests. Within these habitats, microhabitats used by various life stages include leaf litter and rotting wood used by overwintering larvae and their snail, slug, and earthworm prey, undisturbed ground, and mossy areas where females can lay eggs.

Adults from different firefly species also occupy different temporal niches. Within a given habitat, species will appear sequentially through the season. They also partition different segments of the night for their courtship displays: crepuscular species get replaced after dark by different species. With careful planning, then, a good restoration might conceivably support quite an impressive diversity of firefly species! Perhaps the characteristic flash patterns of several different species could be engraved onto benches at the site, as shown in one project rendering.

Another potential project benefit would be to focus attention and perhaps propel local policy changes and zoning amendments toward becoming more insect-friendly. Of particular importance for a successful project would be minimizing pesticide use in residential yards and public spaces, especially broad spectrum insecticides like neonicotinoids. Though few studies have directly tested how they impact fireflies, these insecticides are known to kill many other beneficial insects; they are also highly persistent in soils where firefly larvae live for up to two years before becoming adults. Therefore, a successful restoration depends on residents and site managers being educated about pesticide use and encouraged to avoid unnecessary use of insecticides on lawns and gardens. Aerial insecticides targeting adult mosquitoes should also...

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