Hacker News Reader

Comment by eximius | Hacker News Reader

Remember fireflies? They've all but disappeared in cities because of mosquito spraying.

I just moved from California to Tennessee and only recently got to experience fireflies for the first time in my life. They're incredible :) I don't see them in the city, but that doesnt surprise me... there are tons once you leave downtown, though.

we like to call them "lighting bugs" back here on the east coast ;)

I'm from NY. We call them fire flies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And I grew up in NC where we called them lightning bugs. But, I also grew up on the internet.

We called them "lightning bugs" when I was living in Pennsylvania (as I recall), but since then I've lived in North Carolina and Virginia and now think of them as "fire flies".

Maybe it's a north/south thing, too.

I grew up in Miami and what we called lightning bugs were a beetle with a pair of green glowing dots on the head:

https://youtu.be/7MMleTEQoo4

I now live in NC where the bug is called a firefly and it has a single yellow glow near its tail and looks more like a fly.

I went to Pennsylvania for the first time in my mid twenties. When I saw fireflies, it affected me in a way writing about it can only hint at. A sense of surprise and wonder that I haven’t experienced since childhood - maybe not even then. I haven’t experienced anything like it again, and I suspect I never will.

Intellectually, I knew they were ‘a real thing’, but that in no way prepared me for the reality.

Since then, it’s always been reassuring to look back and know that such wonder can still be felt by a grown adult.

We called them "lightning bugs" in rural Texas. We used to have ice cream after dark in the back yard with the parents and grandparents and neighbors, amidst a swarm of moving stars. It seems magical now, as though I'd dreamt it. But back then, it was just a typical Saturday night.

There was an article posted here recently about fireflies disappearing. The conclusion was more that they have a rather limited range, and prefer certain (damp, wooded) environments, and it is these environments which are disappearing.

To your point, I think a lot of folks forget how much "terraforming" we're doing all of the time. Entire expanses of grasslands and forests are growing and being re-leveled.

A look at Google maps satellite demonstrates changes of color (dark green to light green and vice versa) across parts of several continents, changes that ebb and flow in big ways over just decades. I think this would very much affect insect (and animal and plant) populations.

Can you link that? I'm somewhat skeptical.

My skepticism is rooted in having fireflies where I lived 20 years ago in a neighborhood that wasn't new. Now, there are no fireflies there. Unless the die-off is very slow, my experience clashes with your report that their limited range / terraforming are to blame.

If the article is merely stating that terraforming has MORE of an impact than pesticides... well, that could be true merely because we build more than we spray.

Yes - when I was a kid living in Arkansas we had them all around our house each season. Haven't seen any in Texas or California, where I live now.

Drought has been the major issue for Texas over the years. They really like damp environments, and most of the state has been incredibly dry for the past couple of decades. They're starting to rebound a bit, with the reasonable amounts of rain we've had for several years in a row now.

I never saw them growing up in Texas, but now I live in a house with a creek right behind it, and they're active all summer. I still get really excited about seeing them!

My friends who grew up in Houston find it completely unremarkable, though, due to how wet it is down there. Apparently a very common occurrence.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com