Swiss glow worm survey, 2001

Comments from Pierre-Andre Magnin:

People have seen Lampyris noctiluca higher than 2000 metres in the Alps on the sunny sides of the mountains). This map shows the regions where French or Italian is spoken, because our survey was only launched in the French area of our country (the few spots in the centre and south are in the Italian-spoken ‘Canton du Tessin’ where another glow-worm species is also present).

It is curious that this glow worm survey is in fact a map of the residential houses (in sunny place, southward): Geneva, north of Lake Geneva, north of Lake Neuchatel, and touristic villages in the Alps. They are all places where people have a garden and spend a part of the night outside in the summer.

We received very few observations from the agricultural zones – a surprise. But we don’t know if people there tried to look for glow worms.

Yves Gonseth, director of the Swiss Centre for Fauna Cartography, is very happy with these results. Of course, they are not scientific. But he thinks that they are of value: before the survey, the centre had no idea of the status of glow worms in Switzerland. He has been surprised by the number of observations and their viability. In conclusion, glow worms are apparently everywhere in Switzerland and survive in the private gardens – a good thing. Hope it will be the same in the future....