Lights Out? Experts Fear the World's Fireflies Are Dwindling

WASHINGTON - The summer evening light show may be fading. Entomologists say fireflies are in decline across much of the world, dimmed by development, pesticides and a modern glow the beetles cannot compete with: light pollution.

Fireflies use their bioluminescent flashes to find mates, and researchers say artificial light — streetlights, billboards, even porch lamps — drowns out the signal. Males flash; females flash back; if neither can see the other, the evening ends alone.

"You can't prove a continent-wide decline with one dataset, but every long-term monitoring site we have shows fewer fireflies than twenty years ago," said a Tufts University biologist who studies the beetles.

The insects are more than nostalgia: firefly luciferase, the enzyme behind the glow, is a workhorse of biomedical research, used to track everything from tumor growth to food contamination.

Scientists are enlisting the public through a "Firefly Watch" citizen-science project, asking families to count flashes in their backyards on summer evenings.

The beetles' plight joins a lengthening list of insect concerns, led by the honeybee colony collapse that has alarmed agriculture.

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Associated Press writers contributed to this report.

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