ANTHROPOGENIC PRESSURES ON FIREFLY DIVERSITY LOSS AND POPULATION DECLINE IN CHANGING LANDSCAPES

Abstract

Discussion of the decline of insects in various nations necessitates some key questions that must be answered by conservation biologists regarding the causes and measures to address them. Among the groups of insects gaining prominence lately are fireflies belongs to Coleoptera: Lampyridae, because of the distinct characteristics that they possess, including bioluminescence. While in-depth population surveys are rare for most species, there is anecdotal evidence that some firefly populations have declined over the past few decades. The decline of natural habitats, the use of chemical pesticides, and increasing light pollution at night are some of the primary threats to fireflies in North America, but their overall impact has not been investigated across extensive geographic scales. To disentangle these factors, machine learning models were trained on more than 24,000 surveys submitted between 2008 and 2016 as part of the citizen science program Firefly Watch. Several ecological aspects were explored, such as exposure to pesticides, artificial light pollution, land-use types and patterns, soil parameters, short-term weather phenomena, and long-term climatic data. Future work is needed to confirm the influence of these multiple interactions among soil composition, climatic conditions, and landscape characteristics (e.g., agricultural land and urban surfaces) on firefly abundance. The significant effects of climate and weather also suggest that climate change might play an important role in influencing future firefly populations. For some locations, firefly populations may flourish as ideal habitat conditions become available, while other locations will continue to see declining populations. It is clear that monitoring, climate change control, and the creation of friendly insect habitats will be crucial for firefly survival into the future.