Fireflies, the magical insects that have fascinated children for centuries, are blanketing the night air this summer because of ripe breeding conditions the past two years.
But it appears that these silent, luminous creatures are on the verge of becoming just another ho-hum-albeit flashy-bug.
It used to be kids caught fireflies for sport. Or to make a neat glow-in-the-dark necklace. Scientists even bought the lightning bugs for a penny apiece to conduct important research, creating in countless home refrigerators the curious sight of jars of frozen bugs next to the ice cream.
Those days are diminishing because of a changing society that gets a charge out of pocket color TVs, “Streets of Rage II” video games and computer painting software programs. And, the scientific world doesn’t have much use for the insects anymore, either.
Yet no matter how dim the future looks for the firefly’s popularity, at least one suburban group is trying to rekindle interest with classes on what makes the insect tick, and old-fashioned romps through the park to catch lightning bugs.
With more of the critters flying about this summer than anytime in the past few years, scientists contend, it’s the best time to re-invigorate interest.
The bugs undeniably have stiff competition on the family entertainment front.
Consider the Zerega family from Downers Grove, for instance. Their early summer evenings are full of children’s baseball games or rushing to soccer practice.
“There’s something going on constantly. We’re in the car quite a lot,” said Ellen Zerega, 37, mother of four small children. But when she was growing up, Zerega recalled, having fun was getting an empty peanut butter jar and running through the back yard with her parents to catch fireflies.
“We should spend more time together doing family fun. Maybe we’ve just lost our fascination with lightning bugs,” Zarega said.
That’s too bad, scientists say, because where only a few fireflies could be seen in years past, back yards full of them are a common sight this summer. Heavy rains two years ago have created a bumper crop. The rains ensure a plentiful supply of other ground creatures for the larvae to feed upon while they live in the soil for some two years.
Many adults remember catching them as children with their parents for scientific research in the 1950s and 1960s. Others caught them as children just to ponder the insect’s glow or to smear them on the sidewalk.
But after hundreds of years of admiration and decades of scientific study, companies today don’t want them much. There hasn’t been a whole lot of use for the critters since 1961, when scientists cracked the mystery and duplicated the compounds that make fireflies glow.
“Lampyridae in the order of Coleoptera emit visible energy as a consequence of luciferin being catalyzed by the enzyme luciferinase in the presence of adenosine triphosphate,” said entomologist Phil Nixon of the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service.
In other words, the creatures make their own light by mixing chemicals with oxygen. Photurus versicolor is the type of firefly seen in the Midwest. Across the nation, there are 125 different types of lightning bugs.
In the summer in 1980, scientists thought lightning bugs could be useful in space exploration but nothing ever came of it.
“They don’t really have much significance for us, but they glow nicely,” said Michael Braukus, a NASA official in California. “We send gypsy months, ants and bees into space, but not fireflies,” he said.
Worst of all, children seem to be losing their interest in the lightning bugs.
“Kids need higher stimulation these days and there’s so many more things for them to do,” said Gene Giese, 51, of Hoffman Estates, who entertains his 7-year-old grandson with a handheld electronic game.
“It’s not like the old days, when you caught the lightning bugs and wondered about what makes them glow,” he added.
Giese said that as a boy he caught the insects for his Lombard elementary school, which sold the lightning bugs for a penny each to companies conducting scientic research. “It was terrific fun, running all over and nabbing them. They aren’t that difficult to catch,” he said.
Even companies have lost interest in the insects since discovering what makes the creatures light up.
Businesses once believed there was a fortune waiting to be made in those chemicals. But it never saw the light of day.
The substances have had some usefulness in cancer research. The creature’s technology has found some application in glow-in-the-dark bracelets and necklaces, often seen at rock concerts and county fairs, Nixon said.
“We used to buy them from all over the place, now we just buy a few from the St. Louis area,” said John Hibbler, a spokesman for the Sigma Chemical Co. in St. Louis. The company used to buy them by the millions, 20 years ago.
Hibbler said his company sells the fireflies’ chemicals to laboratories conducting cancer research. He won’t say how many the company buys or what his company does to the insects because every time he does it draws a flood of mail from firefly lovers.
“It’s better if I don’t say anything, because some people get really angry,” he said. “They think the insects are butterflies or something,” he added.
Hibbler said his company is one of a handful that still buys the insects.
Fireflies are actually beetles, said Dr. Bernard Greenberg, an entomologist and biology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Some varieties of the insect, found commonly in western states, don’t give off light.
The insects live underground for two years before taking to the air. By the time they are commonly seen, flashing their light, the creatures only survive a few days. The males flash light to attract females, which remain near the ground. Each species flashes its own signal.
In Glen Ellyn, though, firefly admirers are trying to help the insects find new life.
“We try to make this a fun family atmosphere,” said Carl Strang, who runs the program on fireflies at the Willowbrook Wildlife Center.
“We teach people about the lightning bugs for an hour and then we go out and find out what fun it is to catch them,” he said. Participants learn everything from the insect’s courtship habits to why females don’t fly.
Strang said the free classes are helping turn around public attitudes on firefly catching, but he admits it will take a lot of effort. “Who has got time to pay attention to fireflies anymore?” he said.
He said his free program has begun to fill up since the center began offering it 10 years ago.
Zerega’s 8-year-old son said he’s gone into his backyard recently to catch fireflies.
“I’ve hit them with my baseball bat. It’s kind of fun but then I can’t find them,” he said.
