From flickering fireflies to lowly dung beetles, insects are vanishing

FILE PHOTO: Beetles, which are sold as pets to several countries around the world and traded with the Kmushicoin cryptocurrency created by Tierra Viva, climb a trunk at the company's production plant, where bio-compost and bio-fertilizer are produced, in Tunja, Colombia, October 8, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez/File Photo

As a boy in the 1960s, David Wagner would run around his family’s Missouri farm with a glass jar clutched in his hand, scooping flickering fireflies out of the sky.

“We could fill it up and put it by our bedside at night,” says Wagner, now an entomologist.