Executive Summary : | Fireflies are a remarkable family of beetles displaying phenomenal bioluminescent courtship displays in the living world, making them suitable candidate models to study the health status and integrity of tropical ecosystems with implications for insect conservation (Lewis 2016). With more than 2000 species worldwide, fireflies exhibit diverse life-history traits, being variously and intricately associated with various habitat attributes (Ohba 2004, Lloyd 2018, Lewis 2016, Reed et al., 2020). However, the nighttime landscape is no longer illuminated by fireflies. They are decreasing at an alarming rate and their light is fading. Since fireflies are trusted markers of environmental health and are abundant in healthy ecosystems, their numbers have alarmingly declined over much of their range, raising concerns about the harm to the environment globally. Urbanization and agronomic pressure-induced habitat loss and degradation were among the many variables ascribed to the cause of this decline, making them threatened throughout their distributional range and predisposing them to an elevated risk of extinction in human-modified environments (Reed et al., 2020). Also, the indiscriminate use of insecticides (Sanchez-Bayo 2011) and strong artificial lights that outshine the Firefly flashes affect their mating ritual (Owens and Lewis 2018, Mbugua et al., 2020). However, albeit all these conservation issues, the precarious nature of firefly conservation has hitherto failed to harness global interest and effort (Cardoso et al., 2011). Thus, it becomes imperative to undertake a comprehensive study evaluating the species-habitat relationship in a fast-changing tropical landscape with a high degree of urbanization. With this in mind, we propose to explore the potential role of habitat profile and degree of urbanization in regulating the diversity, occupancy, and abundance pattern of fireflies in Meghalaya, Northeast India. This project will be a pioneering work in this biodiversity hotspot state and will provide an opportunity in evaluating the status, species distribution, diversity, molecular level identification and biological luminescent investigation, urbanization quantification, and its impact on the firefly community. It will also assist in organizing outreach programs like Seminars, Workshops and Interactive Sessions for individuals especially school and college students of various parts of Meghalaya for dissemination of awareness regarding the importance of these bioluminescent beetles and the need for conservation and preservation of their habitats and the important ecological services render to the environment as a whole. We are hopeful that the findings of the study will enable us to identify the suite of ecological covariates that govern the life history traits of fireflies in a human-modified landscape and chalk out long-term conservation plans for their continued persistence and survival. |