1. Much is known about the brief adult phase of fireflies. However, fireflies spend a relatively long developmental period under the soil surface. Climatic and soil conditions may directly affect the eggs, larvae and pupae and indirectly affect them through predators, competitors and prey items. Climatic conditions during the early life stages of this iconic species are therefore relevant to their hypothesized decline within the context of global warming.2. We extracted data on the abundance of fireflies from the publicly available citizen data set across North America over a period of nine years. We document the effects of weather in the 24 months prior to the observations of firefly abundance based on 6761 observations. 3. Climatic conditions during both the larval and adult phases have a non-linear effect on adult firefly abundance. Maximum winter and spring temperatures and mean precipitation in the 20month period prior to the observations had the greatest impact on the abundance of firefly adults.Low maximum soil moisture during the 5-19 months preceding the observations affected the adult abundance negatively, and high maximum soil moisture positively. 4. After correcting the firefly abundance for these weather effects, we estimate that the abundance of fireflies increased over the time period of this study.5. Our study suggests that early life climatic conditions have a small but significant impact on adult firefly abundance with a total R 2 of 0.017.
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