Does ANYONE have access to firefly eggs? I want to breed them as a hobby! Any advice on acquiring them?
When I was a kid, we would always see fireflys around. Don't really see them anymore...I wonder why that is.
Cars and pesticides. Apparently, the little buggers are carnivores in their year-long larval stage though...diode-man, if you succeeded in getting eggs, you'd have to keep the little buggers fed for a year. I tend to see fireflies the most these days in unmowed, seeding-type grass with adjacent woods. So if you want fireflies around, I'd try planting some sort of grass that goes to seed in your yard and stop mowing...also plant small, fast-growing trees around the perimeter. I'd also suggest adding composted manure to your yard, as this would also increase the amount of prey species for the babies to eat. Apparently they lay eggs under the tree bark of live trees, and the babies hunt other bugs...so you'd want to keep things as natural as possible to increase the full complement of prey for them to eat.
It does, doesn't it?...but I did hear it somewhere...and the adults seem to hang out in unmowed grass a lot-often near freeways... I always feel bad when I hit one-they leave a little phosphor-trail across my windshield.
Yes, but most of them are bound to hang out away from the roads. Right? Besides, they are beetles. There's plenty of redundancy built in, in the number of offspring. My bet would be on chemicals as being the culprit here if, in fact, they are in decline.
I'm afriad you'll probably have to catch them yourself. See here for an interesting web-page about rearing Fire Flies: http://www.byteland.org/firefly/howtorearfireflies.html
I would Love to catch them myself, but unfortunately I live in Colorado, so No Fireflies here. Would anybody be willing to send me some Live ones?
http://wci.colostate.edu/Assets/pdf/CIIFactSheets/Fireflies.pdf and more recent info: http://www.kunc.org/post/think-fireflies-can-t-be-found-colorado-think-again
