Why the lights are going out for fireflies

Fireflies face a dim future because of habitat loss and light pollution. How can conservationists help?At dusk, graduate student Sara Lewis was sitting on her back porch in North Carolina with her dog. "We were supposed to be mowing our grass, but we never did, so we had long grass in our yard," she recalls. "Suddenly this cloud of sparks rose up out of the grass and started flying around me."Each spark was a firefly: a beetle that glows in the dark. Hundreds of fireflies had gathered in Lewis's back yard and were soaring around her. "It was this incredible spectacle," says Lewis, "and I just sort of gasped." Then she became fascinated. "I started wondering what the heck was going on here, what were these bugs doing, what were they talking about?" She has spent much of the past three decades studying fireflies. Continue reading...