Some Abiotic and Biotic Factors Influencing Firefly Population Abundance in Southeast Asia: A Review

Abstract

This paper reviews biotic and abiotic factors that influence the life cycle of fireflies. This review paper has screened and chosen articles by using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) from two databases: Semantic Scholar (n = 1080) and Google Scholar (n = 2280). From this review, generally, abiotic factors, i.e., water level in soil, air temperature, air humidity, rainy season, altitude, water salinity (NaCl), wind direction, wind speed, dissolved oxygen (DO), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N) and maximum air pollution index (API) were most likely influenced the population abundance and distribution of the fireflies in Southeast Asia. Biotic factors include the presence of Cyclotropis carinata snails, vegetation health, tree suitability (leaf size, density, arrangement of leaves, tree location), insecticides (Saponins) in some vegetation species, plant structural architecture, and food (nectar and sap) were the most likely to influence the presence of fireflies species even though synchronous firefly of Southeast Asia were found in other vegetation species, Sonneratia caseolaris (Berembang) still the most preferred display tree. From this review, we also found that Malaysia has the highest reported findings on firefly studies in this region. To conclude, numerous abiotic and biotic elements should be researched further to determine their relationship to firefly populations and other vertebrate-invertebrates in their natural environment.