LARIMER COUNTY, Colo. — If you’ve spent a summer night east of the Mississippi, chances are you’ve seen or even captured a firefly.
The beetles, known for their bioluminescence, use flashes of light to communicate with each other, creating a beautiful spectacle around sunset.
But few Coloradans have ever witnessed a show like that in the Centennial State, where fireflies remain extremely uncommon.
“Most people that live in Colorado, they don’t even know that we have fireflies,” Cori Brant said.
Brant is the manager of entomology at Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, where they’re researching the beetles.
In June, crews collected 50 fireflies from a marshland in Larimer County, where thousands of fireflies thrive on a small plot of land every year. Biologists are trying to breed these 40 males and 10 females for research at the pavilion.
Researchers asked 9NEWS not to identify the location, which requires a permit to access fully.
“We might not know exactly why this area is so special to them, but that’s the whole point,” Brant said. “It’s not a sight that I think many people think to see in Colorado, just looking out and seeing all these beautiful flashing lights.”
Brant said across the country, firefly populations are declining.
“When we start to see their population decline, we kind of know that’s an indicator that within our ecosystem, that something is missing or changing drastically, whether that’s temperature, whether that’s loss of habitat, whether it’s a change in water,” she said. “We as humans manipulate the environment so much, and we have to pay attention to what that can in turn do.”
Fireflies, known as an indicator species, are a sign of a healthy ecosystem, according to entomologist Francisco Garcia.
“We’re just trying to understand more about their life cycle and what makes them happy, so in the long-term goal we can start helping this population thrive across the western United States,” Garcia said.
Biologists are trying to figure out why the fireflies are thriving in select areas of the state, but not others. They've successfully reproduced a handful of fireflies from previous captures, and one day hope to be able to release the offspring into the wild.