cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11787771
[alt text: Text that says, “People [say] 'I never see butterflies or lightning bugs in my yard. Their yard: (colon)”. Below the text is a photo of a birds-eye view of a large house with an equally large yard. The lawn is covered in standard turfgrass (probably Kentucky bluegrass) that has been recently mowed.]
…I wondered why I still had fireflies around, the answer is being lazy with leaves? My laziness is paying off! I love seeing the little fireflies! We also have a lot of trees here so that helps more!
Yup! They live for 1-2 years as larvae in the ground, and they require moisture to survive. Keeping the leaves down and undisturbed raises the moisture level of the dirt underneath and provides habitat for all sorts of things the larvae will eat. You’ll also find the number of lighting bugs you’ve got in your yard varies with how much moisture your yard had the previous two years. You can have a bumper crop of adults in a drought year, but two years later could have a rainy year with very few
After all, nature is evolved around being undisturbed, there are no people taking leaves out in the wild after all
Human actions are an unnatural influence, so unless those actions are in deliberate aid to nature, it makes sense that it’s going to disturb the natural order of things more than anything else