I would personally make the fireflies move, instead of only going up. They could rotate, move backwards and forwards, left and right, etc.
I would also make them flicker, as fireflies do flicker in real life. That would be quite neat. Make the transparency higher and lower to get that effect.
Well fireflies do typically light up and then fade. You may want to use a Transparency number sequence for the particle system. You click the … by Transparency and you can make them flicker by setting the value up and down over time.