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UNIVERSITY PARK -- Catching fireflies is an iconic summer experience for many people living in North America, but the flickering beetles are on the decline. New research has identified factors that may be contributing to declining populations.
The study, which is available online now and will be published in the June 15 issue of Science of the Total Environment, suggests that fireflies are sensitive to various environmental factors, from short-term weather conditions to longer climatic trends.
The team -- including researchers from Penn State, the University of Kentucky, Bucknell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service -- used advanced artificial intelligence-based machine learning techniques to analyze more than 24,000 surveys conducted through the citizen science initiative Firefly Watch, now called Firefly Atlas, to arrive at their conclusions.
The researchers said the study marks the first comprehensive attempt to apply a data-driven approach to understanding firefly population dynamics on a continental scale.
Study co-author Christina Grozinger -- Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and director of the Insect Biodiversity Center in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences -- said while scientists previously knew that urbanization, agricultural intensification and climate change can affect biodiversity, less was known about how these complex factors interact and what people can do in their own backyards, towns and cities to
support biodiversity.
"In this study, we integrated large-scale datasets on species abundance, land use, soil type, weather and climate using AI-based machine learning models to precisely model and predict firefly abundance patterns at the local scale across the eastern U.S.," Grozinger said. "We were very fortunate to have a multi-year citizen science data set that spanned more than 24,000 observations."
Fireflies thrive in temperate conditions, the researchers said, with wet and warm summers creating the ideal breeding environment and cold winters supporting the survival of immature stages such as eggs, larvae and pupae.
However, as global temperatures rise, these conditions become less predictable and, often, less hospitable. Changes in precipitation patterns, another critical factor for firefly survival, have led to either overly dry conditions that reduce larval survival or excessively wet conditions that can flood breeding grounds and disrupt life cycles.