Researchers went into twenty suburban yards in Maryland, raked half the plots and left the other half alone. The raked plots produced 45% fewer moths and butterflies. Overall emergence dropped 17%. Beetles fell 24%. Spiders fell by as much as 67%. Moth and butterfly diversity dropped about 40%, and the species that vanished were the ones that overwinter as larvae or inside fallen leaves. Fireflies, moths, bees, and beetles spend the winter in the leaf layer as eggs, larvae, pupae or adults. Bag it up and you've sent them to the dump, and probably to their deaths. Shredding isn't the compromise people think it is. The same lab tested mulch-mowing against leaving leaves intact, and mulching cut emerging moths almost in half. A mower turns leaves into mulch and everything inside them into paste. Rake the leaves off the lawn if you need to, then dump them under the trees and in the beds. That's where they'd have blown anyway. Paths and edges can stay clean. The middle is where the work happens.