Speaker 1: Oh hey, it's that key that's under the mat that
Speaker 1: somehow nobody finds and uses to steal all your stuff.
Speaker 1: Ali Ward back, I'm back. I'm just plain old home
Speaker 1: after a few weeks away, getting hitched, hanging out with
Speaker 1: family in Montana, being off my phone, eating too many
Speaker 1: fried cheese curds. I swam in a lake, I laughed
Speaker 1: with my aunties, and I was a wife for the
Speaker 1: first time of my life. But I'm back. We have
Speaker 1: fireflies for you, or do we have lightning bugs? We're
Speaker 1: going to get into it. So these glowing friends, they're
Speaker 1: neither flies nor true bugs, rather beatles in the family
Speaker 1: lamparade e. But as you will soon learn, this episode's
Speaker 1: name comes at an expert's behest. So she is a
Speaker 1: professor of biology at Tufts University in Boston. She did
Speaker 1: a TED talk on these beloved little critters. She's the
Speaker 1: author of the information pact and entertaining book Silent Sparks
Speaker 1: The Wondrous World of Fireflies. You may know her on
Speaker 1: Twitter under the handle Silent Sparks. And I was introduced
Speaker 1: to her through Eric Eaton, who was our wasp champion
Speaker 1: a few episodes back, and I jumped at the chance
Speaker 1: to talk to her. Crammed it in the schedule a
Speaker 1: day or two before my wedding earlier this month, and
Speaker 1: we will get to know her work. And just a second,
Speaker 1: but super quick, thank you to everyone at patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Ologies for making this show possible for the
Speaker 1: four years we've been around, and for submitting great questions
Speaker 1: every week. Thank you to everyone for keeping Ologies in
Speaker 1: the number two spot on Apple podcast Science with your
Speaker 1: ratings and reviews. And I just read all that you
Speaker 1: left and you know how to make a dad word
Speaker 1: feel cool. Each week I pick a fresh one. And
Speaker 1: thanks Megan Sir for writing the review for the first
Speaker 1: time since I was a kid. I am amazed by
Speaker 1: science Ologies unlocks life's mysteries and enables you to see
Speaker 1: all of its beauties. So happy to be your rusty
Speaker 1: key for that, Megan. And thank you to everyone whose
Speaker 1: reviews I creepily read literally all of them. Okay, onward Sparkle,
Speaker 1: but Ology. You're going to learn the etymology in a minute.
Speaker 1: I'm not even go there in the intro, but you
Speaker 1: will also get hip to how these animals light up,
Speaker 1: why they light up our hearts, their luminous, sexy language.
Speaker 1: The best firefly photography accounts to follow, How to take
Speaker 1: your own pictures, dos and don'ts of firefly observation. Is
Speaker 1: it actually okay to put them in jars on your nightstands?
Speaker 1: Or are you a monster? Cobalt ghosts, pink glowworms, fem
Speaker 1: fatales of the firefly world. How their populations are doing
Speaker 1: if artificial lights affect them, How to join conservation efforts,
Speaker 1: and why Western states need not suffer from sparkle but
Speaker 1: envy any longer. With firefly scientists, evolutionary ecologist, researcher, conservation advocate, professor, author,
Speaker 1: and perhaps the world's first and only self proclaimed sparkle botologist,
Speaker 1: Doctor Sarah Lewis.
Speaker 2: My name is Sarah Lewis and I use she her
Speaker 2: let us dive.
Speaker 1: Great, Doctor Lewis, thank you so much for joining your ology.
Speaker 1: Is it lamp perology? Would that be what it is?
Speaker 2: You know, this is really really a hard decision. I
Speaker 2: spent a lot of time in the last day thinking
Speaker 2: about this, and so I don't know. I don't like
Speaker 2: lamper I don't like that one at all. What about
Speaker 2: lightning bugology? Or I don't know like sparkle buttology. There's
Speaker 2: so many really great ones. You know, why use the
Speaker 2: family scientific name? It just doesn't seem right.
Speaker 1: Sparkle buttology.
Speaker 2: It is, okay, I like that one, too good or agreed.
Speaker 1: You are one of the world's most well known firefly
Speaker 1: experts and scientists and enthusiasts, and can you tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about your relationship with bugs in general?
Speaker 1: Have you always been pro bug so?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, no, I haven't. In fact, I don't
Speaker 2: like every single insect. I am completely completely in love
Speaker 2: with fireflies, and I think that most people are. You know,
Speaker 2: I know a lot of people who don't really like insects.
Speaker 2: In fact, they have kind of you know, entomophobia.
Speaker 1: Oh, we don't like bugs, Honie, they don't like bugs.
Speaker 2: But I've really never met a single person who didn't
Speaker 2: like fireflies, so they're you know, they're kind of unique
Speaker 2: in that way, right, Like even insect haters love fireflies.
Speaker 2: Of course, many people don't realize that fireflies are insects,
Speaker 2: so huh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think they think they.
Speaker 2: Are magical fairies? Yeah? Absolutely. I spend an inordinate amount
Speaker 2: of time trying to sort of educate and advocate for
Speaker 2: fireflies on social media, and so one of the things
Speaker 2: I've noticed on Twitter is that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people who don't actually think that fireflies exist. They think
Speaker 2: they're like something that's in children's stories. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like a myth. And uh huh, Yeah, there really aren't
Speaker 2: any fireflies as far as they're concerned. They just don't
Speaker 2: believe it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I felt that way about huckleberries, and then
Speaker 1: I found out they were a real food. It was
Speaker 1: like a huckleberry exists. So fireflies, I guess that's a
Speaker 1: first flim flam to debunk, is that fireflies are non existent,
Speaker 1: but they're not fixed. They're real.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many really cool myths tod bunk about fireflies.
Speaker 2: I just love it. You know, it's like so much fun. Right,
Speaker 2: what are their myths?
Speaker 1: Do you feel like people come at you to ask about?
Speaker 2: Okay, so, first, they are real, that's cool. And yeah.
Speaker 2: The other thing is that a lot of people think,
Speaker 2: you know, you've seen one firefly, you've seen them all,
Speaker 2: but there's actually a lot of different kinds of fireflies,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, there's a tremendous diversity in terms of
Speaker 2: their behavior and their lifestyles and the kinds of things
Speaker 2: that they like to do, the kinds of things they
Speaker 2: like to eat. And so that's really cool. Like there's
Speaker 2: not just one kind of firefly. If you believe that
Speaker 2: fireflies are real, you might think there's just one that
Speaker 2: there's there's actually about well more than two thousand different
Speaker 2: species of firefly, and it turns out we're discovering new
Speaker 2: ones all the time.
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool. How big and how small do they get?
Speaker 2: Hmm? So they can be pretty tiny, like you can
Speaker 2: still see them with your naked eyes, so not that tiny,
Speaker 2: and they can also get really big. A couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, I was in Malaysia and I had a
Speaker 2: chance to see these. They're kind of giant flight lists
Speaker 2: female fireflies. They're like the females are like the size
Speaker 2: of your thumb, Oh, a big thumb, right, So they're
Speaker 2: usually and they don't have any wings. They actually they
Speaker 2: kind of look wormish and they are they're pale, and
Speaker 2: they're big, and they're full of eggs and they crawl
Speaker 2: around on the ground. And the genus is Lampigera. And
Speaker 2: they're actually really cool because the males look like regular
Speaker 2: little fireflies, but the females are giant, much much bigger
Speaker 2: than the males, and they are like putting all of
Speaker 2: their energy into reproduction. They don't bother flying around, like,
Speaker 2: you know, why bother. I'll just sit here let the
Speaker 2: males come to me.
Speaker 1: So some of these lady lightning bugs endemic to Asia
Speaker 1: would fill up your whole palm had you the chance
Speaker 1: to hold one. They are wingless, dense, pregnant, with a
Speaker 1: button that blinks like a flickering neon sign. Kind of
Speaker 1: like the sexy job of the hut of fireflies with
Speaker 1: a real flashy ass. Now much different than the airborne
Speaker 1: field fairies that folks in North America might be used to.
Speaker 1: When did you first encounter them? Because I grew up
Speaker 1: in California, so I didn't see one until I was
Speaker 1: out of college when I went to New Jersey one summer.
Speaker 1: But when did you first encounter fireflies?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, it's funny. A lot of people have
Speaker 2: these like origin stories of like first seen fireflies when
Speaker 2: they were kids and they just fell in love and
Speaker 2: they've been in love with fireflies ever since. It's like
Speaker 2: a childhood nostalgia thing for many people. I grew up
Speaker 2: in Connecticut but I don't remember seeing fireflies until I
Speaker 2: was actually in school in North Carolina and I was
Speaker 2: a marine biologist, and I was waiting to go to
Speaker 2: the field in Belize where I was studying coral reef ecology.
Speaker 2: And I was sitting out on my back porch and
Speaker 2: with my dog, and it was like late afternoon, and
Speaker 2: a thunderstorm was rolling in, and so suddenly it got
Speaker 2: darker and darker and darker, and just before started to rain,
Speaker 2: I noticed that all around us in the grass, there
Speaker 2: were these lights that were coming out of the grass
Speaker 2: and slowly rising up, and they were like the silent sparks,
Speaker 2: like embers, coming out of the grass and just filling
Speaker 2: the air all around me. And it was like, whoa,
Speaker 2: what is going on here? That is the first time, honestly,
Speaker 2: I remember seeing fireflies. It was like, huh, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: When did you sort of turn your sail from the
Speaker 1: marine studies back to land?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, it's been us kind of evolution
Speaker 2: of interests. And one of the great things about being
Speaker 2: in academia is that you have like you can kind
Speaker 2: of follow your curiosity. And that night, actually my curiosity
Speaker 2: got sparked and I started to wonder, like, what the
Speaker 2: heck is going on here? Like who is flying? What
Speaker 2: are they flashing about? Who are are they talking to?
Speaker 2: What are they saying? And so in my copious free time,
Speaker 2: I got to sort of investigate some of those questions
Speaker 2: and reach out to the to the firefly experts that
Speaker 2: I could find in the US and elsewhere, and to
Speaker 2: start to put together like what do we know about fireflies?
Speaker 2: And what are the big sort of missing pieces, what
Speaker 2: don't we know and where can I contribute to trying
Speaker 2: to answer some of these questions. And so after I
Speaker 2: got my PhD.
Speaker 1: Doctor Lewis got her PhD in coral reef ecology in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four from Duke University in.
Speaker 2: North Carolina, I moved to Massachusetts and started working on fireflies.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to say that I've worked continuously
Speaker 2: on fireflies, but a lot of the work that my
Speaker 2: students and I have done has been looking at the
Speaker 2: kind of intimate details of firefly sex lives and courts
Speaker 2: chip and it's been really fascinating. We've been able to
Speaker 2: like discover all this, you know, really really cool stuff.
Speaker 1: Would you say that's primarily why they're flashing their morse code.
Speaker 1: Is that pretty much booty calls like in a literal sense, yep.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, yep, yep it is. And yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: subtle and there are you know, there's all kinds of
Speaker 2: innuendo in there, and if you're just looking at it
Speaker 2: from the gross point of view, it's like, yeah, they're
Speaker 2: just kind of flashing back and forth and trying to
Speaker 2: find mates, but really they're actually trying to find like
Speaker 2: the best mates, and the females are really choosy and
Speaker 2: the males are really competitive, and they're doing all this stuff.
Speaker 2: All of this information is being passed in this beautiful
Speaker 2: visual channel that people can actually see. So, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of insects communicate on other kinds of channels,
Speaker 2: like you know, smell or sound or ultrasound, different things
Speaker 2: that are a little bit harder to eavesdrop on. But
Speaker 2: fireflies are a beautiful thing because all of this courtship
Speaker 2: exchange is going on in visual signals that are really
Speaker 2: really easy for human beings to see, to record using
Speaker 2: electronic devices, and also to play back. And so one
Speaker 2: of the things that my students and I have been
Speaker 2: able to do is to evesdrop on the courtship conversations
Speaker 2: of these different kinds of fireflies, and then to be
Speaker 2: able to play back, just to tweak the signals that
Speaker 2: males are giving a little bit, make them a little
Speaker 2: bit faster, make them a little bit longer, make them
Speaker 2: a little bit slower, and then play them back to
Speaker 2: female fireflies. And one of the great things about this
Speaker 2: isn't true for all fireflies, but a whole lot of
Speaker 2: the fireflies in the US engage in a we call
Speaker 2: it a courtship dialogue. So they talk back and forth.
Speaker 2: So the males are flying around, they're advertising their availability
Speaker 2: with this pretty stereotyped signal, and the females respond to
Speaker 2: these male signals if they like the male. If they
Speaker 2: don't like the male, they shut up.
Speaker 1: She ghosted you.
Speaker 2: They don't say anything at all. And so you can
Speaker 2: actually find out what a firefly female is thinking about
Speaker 2: a signal by just asking her. And so it's kind
Speaker 2: of like conducting an opinion poll, right you say, or
Speaker 2: you know, going to the eye doctor, you know, they
Speaker 2: put those lens things on you and they say, you know,
Speaker 2: is this better or is this better? Is this better?
Speaker 2: Or is this better? And you can do that to
Speaker 2: a female firefly, and she will tell you, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is the signal that I like, Wow.
Speaker 1: Are you doing that with little like led lights?
Speaker 2: Yes? Really exactly. Yeah, So that's been kind of fun.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that we discovered is that
Speaker 2: female fireflies are really kind of choosy about who they
Speaker 2: respond to. If the female doesn't respond, of course the
Speaker 2: male can't see her. It's dark and so he won't
Speaker 2: be able to find her and mate. But if she
Speaker 2: does respond, there's like a whole frenzy. You know, she
Speaker 2: responds to one male, a whole bunch of males might
Speaker 2: see her. It gets to be like this very very
Speaker 2: exciting competitive dating scene. So yeah, I guess a lot
Speaker 2: of my adult life has been spent following fireflies around
Speaker 2: at night and watching their courtship and mating. It's a
Speaker 2: little strange.
Speaker 1: What kinds of questions and answers are they looking for?
Speaker 1: Are they looking for who has the shortest pulses or
Speaker 1: the longest light or is it species specific?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it differs with different species, but in general, it
Speaker 2: seems to be the females are looking for males that
Speaker 2: are a little bit more conspicuous within the parameters of
Speaker 2: their species specific flash code, right, a little bit more
Speaker 2: conspicuous than other males. So in some of the species
Speaker 2: where the males are giving like a s bleep, bleep, bleep,
Speaker 2: females will be looking for slightly longer leaps, not necessarily
Speaker 2: something that you could see with your eye or that
Speaker 2: you're with your brain with a human brain, but the
Speaker 2: brain of a female firefly can make those distinctions and
Speaker 2: they choose to respond to males that have slightly longer
Speaker 2: durations of those single flashes. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that we weren't actually looking for this, but one of
Speaker 2: the things that we discovered was that one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that female fireflies are so choosy is that males
Speaker 2: are giving females a present to the females. And it's
Speaker 2: called a nuptial gift. And totally that's really the scientific
Speaker 2: term for it. It's like one of the best non
Speaker 2: jargon scientific terms, Like everybody understands a nuptial gift. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what it is. So during mating, male fireflies are
Speaker 2: giving females not just their gammets, right, not just their sperm,
Speaker 2: but also this package. And it's a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: It's like this very elaborate structure. If you happen to
Speaker 2: look inside a male firefly, which you know, probably most
Speaker 2: people never have a chance to do, but it's incredible
Speaker 2: what's inside. They don't really have a digestive tract or
Speaker 2: any of the other like you know, liver, spleen, stomach,
Speaker 2: all that stuff that we think of as internal organs.
Speaker 2: Their internal organs are basically reproductive glands that manufacture this
Speaker 2: elaborate package that is full of nutrients and they transfer
Speaker 2: that internally to the female while they're mating. And the
Speaker 2: males that have the more desirable flashes also turn out
Speaker 2: in many cases to have the larger nuptial gifts. And
Speaker 2: the nuptial gifts are a big deal for the females
Speaker 2: because they are full of protein, among other things that
Speaker 2: the female then can use to provision her eggs, and
Speaker 2: so females that get more nuptial gifts actually are able
Speaker 2: to lay more eggs. So that's a cool thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: why not choose?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if you kind of know through advertising
Speaker 1: like okay, longer pulse, bigger gift, then there you go,
Speaker 1: like bigger sandwich, he's gonna bring me.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we call it firefly bling.
Speaker 1: Just a side note, Right before recording this a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago, I was cranky as hell and I could
Speaker 1: not figure out why. And then I realized that we
Speaker 1: had run out of coffee that morning, and so Jared
Speaker 1: then simply my fiance ran out to get my favorite latte,
Speaker 1: as kind of a pre nuptial gift, one might say.
Speaker 1: And my tiny brain was indeed impressed, and I was
Speaker 1: very grateful to have those nutrients. And I feel like
Speaker 1: it's important to note that he did not deliver this
Speaker 1: latte internally or during a copulatory act, because I'm not.
Speaker 1: I don't have that big a coffee problem. And what
Speaker 1: about you? Are you a night person? How much of
Speaker 1: your work involves these really long nights?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. You know, I don't know what people
Speaker 2: who live in the tropics where firefly season is all
Speaker 2: year round, I don't know how they survive, because, you know,
Speaker 2: in the temperate zone, you have a kind of a
Speaker 2: short firefly season. It might go from I don't know,
Speaker 2: like May until September, or maybe just June, July, August.
Speaker 2: And during the firefly season, my students and I basically
Speaker 2: we work day and night. We get so strung out,
Speaker 2: it's ridiculous. We can't even think straight. People hate us,
Speaker 2: our partners like leave us, our dog, you know, walks out.
Speaker 2: It's really bad. You can do it for a few
Speaker 2: years and then you have to take a break. But
Speaker 2: you know, we're usually out in the field at night,
Speaker 2: and then we are often doing lab experiments with fireflies
Speaker 2: that we've collected from the field and then on a
Speaker 2: reverse like light cycle so that they think it's nighttime
Speaker 2: when it's actually daytime. And so during the day we
Speaker 2: work in a dark room on fireflies that think it's night.
Speaker 2: So you can get kind of strung out on that
Speaker 2: for after a while, but you know, it's it's all
Speaker 2: worth it. Yeah, it's fabulous to be able to bring
Speaker 2: some of the magic of these creatures to light and
Speaker 2: to let people know, you know, that they're real and
Speaker 2: they're really really kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: They're real and they're spectacular. And you mentioned the tropics
Speaker 1: and the temperate zones. Does that mean that they don't
Speaker 1: inhabit like arid climates as much? Why don't we have
Speaker 1: them in California?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So another myth that I am actually really glad
Speaker 2: to well, happy to be able to debunk is that
Speaker 2: a lot of people think that there aren't any fireflies
Speaker 2: in the Western States, and that's not true. So happy,
Speaker 2: you should be happy. They should be happy because there are.
Speaker 2: So there's at least three different kinds of fireflies. There's
Speaker 2: the daytime fireflies. They fly during the daytime. The adults
Speaker 2: don't light up, even though the larvae do. They're still
Speaker 2: in the same firefly family. There's lots of those in
Speaker 2: California and in the West. There are also glow worm fireflies,
Speaker 2: where the females typically well, the females glow typically they
Speaker 2: are worm like, as in, they don't fly. And there's
Speaker 2: really really cool glow worm fireflies on the West coast,
Speaker 2: including you got to google this, the California pink glow worm.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, they're so beautiful. They are really beautiful,
Speaker 2: and they're all over California. And I don't know why
Speaker 2: people don't recognize those as fireflies. The males don't light up,
Speaker 2: but the females do. They glow for hours to attract
Speaker 2: these flying on lit mails and they're really really cool.
Speaker 1: Okay, hold the phone boy, Howdy hot damn what Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm a lifelong Californian absolute sniveling simp for bugs.
Speaker 1: And yet this is the first I'm hearing ever of
Speaker 1: the pink glowworm alias the firefly, beetle, microphotos and gustus. Now,
Speaker 1: the ladies stay kind of babylike in a larva ish form,
Speaker 1: and they just cruise the leaf litter, kind of like
Speaker 1: salmon colored segmented tiny hot dogs. And then their soulmates
Speaker 1: are dude beetles who fly around, not glowing, but just
Speaker 1: looking out for butts. Now, I have spent my life
Speaker 1: jealous of New Jersey and ignoring all of these horny,
Speaker 1: babylike sparkle butts under my California nose. But as long
Speaker 1: as we're getting regional. I covered this ages ago in
Speaker 1: a minniesod you probably never heard. But do you call
Speaker 1: them you personally? Do you call them fireflies or lightning bugs?
Speaker 1: Take a moment, vote aloud while you're layering up a
Speaker 1: lasagna or welding something or brushing a chinchilla. Lightning bugs? Okay,
Speaker 1: I hope one of you said peeni wallies, because a
Speaker 1: University of Cambridge linguistics professor by the name of Bert
Speaker 1: Voe also needed to know firefly or lightning bug? So
Speaker 1: he asked ten thousand Americans what they call sparkle butts.
Speaker 1: Forty percent of you go either way, firefly, lightning bug,
Speaker 1: you don't care. Thirty percent of us are exclusively team firefly. Hello,
Speaker 1: West Coast High Massachusetts. And about another thirty percent say yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's lightning bug the South. Greetings to you. But to
Speaker 1: my delight and probably Professor Voe's the Futtlement, zero point
Speaker 1: two percent of those people he polled call these glowing
Speaker 1: summer acuties peenie wallies. So that's two people in a
Speaker 1: study of ten thousand, and if they are not already friends, oh,
Speaker 1: I hope they find each other. I want them to
Speaker 1: hold hands and just stare into the summer dusk. So
Speaker 1: my point is we need not be a nation divided
Speaker 1: on the topic of peenie wallies, especially now because and.
Speaker 2: The other exciting news and this is something that we're
Speaker 2: really just actually, this is really really recent that we
Speaker 2: have begun to realize that there are flashing fireflies in
Speaker 2: the Western United States. So there's actually there's a Western
Speaker 2: Firefly Project that's run out of the Natural History Museum
Speaker 2: of Utah, and they've been mapping flashing fireflies in Utah,
Speaker 2: Nevada nearby states. For since twenty fourteen, there's a new
Speaker 2: project called the New Mexico Firefly Project. There's flashing fireflies
Speaker 2: in New Mexico, in Colorado. I heard a rumor there
Speaker 2: might be flashing fireflies in Oregon. So a lot of
Speaker 2: this is very very recent and a lot of it
Speaker 2: is based on citizen science, like community science observations, just
Speaker 2: people going out into the night looking for fireflies in
Speaker 2: different places where there are certain characteristics like moisture, like
Speaker 2: darkness and food for the firefly larvae. So yeah, it's
Speaker 2: really exciting there are Western fireflies. That's a myth that
Speaker 2: it just gives me great pleasure to be able to say, no,
Speaker 2: not true. You do have them, and they're really really beautiful.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So if you've been asking fireflies, where have
Speaker 1: you been all my life? The answer is perhaps closer
Speaker 1: than you thought. Right here literally with a flashing fud
Speaker 1: you just didn't notice. But where have we been all
Speaker 1: of their lives? How long do they spend in the
Speaker 1: inky evenings? What's up with our life cycle?
Speaker 2: Yes? So one of the things that people who believe
Speaker 2: that fireflies are real and maybe have even seen fireflies.
Speaker 2: Many people don't realize that what we're looking at when
Speaker 2: we see these ethereal adults flying around in the night,
Speaker 2: we're just looking at the very very tip of the
Speaker 2: firefly life cycle. Like that, it's the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2: Fireflies spend up to two years living their lives in
Speaker 2: a completely different environment. So fireflies are beetles, and like
Speaker 2: other beetles, they go through complete metamorphosis. So the adult firefly,
Speaker 2: the female layser eggs, the eggs hatch out into little,
Speaker 2: tiny firefly larvae.
Speaker 1: So there are a few thousand species of fireflies, and
Speaker 1: as adults, they're between five and twenty five millimeters long,
Speaker 1: just an inch long at the biggest. But in their
Speaker 1: larval forms, they're little and they're hungry.
Speaker 2: And it's the larval stage where they are they're eating,
Speaker 2: and they're actually they're predators. They're voracious predators. They're really
Speaker 2: kind of fearsome voracious predators because they live underground and
Speaker 2: sometimes in rotting wood, sometimes in leaf litter, and they're
Speaker 2: burrowing around and they're looking for soft bodied things like earthworms, slugs, snails,
Speaker 2: and that's what they eat. And even though they're tiny,
Speaker 2: they have the ability to bite and paralyze prey that's
Speaker 2: many many, many times bigger than themselves. So a couple
Speaker 2: of firefly larvae can take down a really big earthworm,
Speaker 2: paralyze it so that it basically can't move. It's still alive,
Speaker 2: can't move, still alive, can't move, and then they will, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they'll just feast on that earthworm for days and days
Speaker 2: and days and days.
Speaker 1: Do they hunt in packs? Are they hunting in packs
Speaker 1: like wolves?
Speaker 2: Yeah? You know, we don't actually know what they do
Speaker 2: in the field, but they're many observations of and I've
Speaker 2: seen it myself in the lab. Firefly larvae will gather
Speaker 2: together in groups to take down an earthworm. And you
Speaker 2: see them, Oh man, it's just kind of gory. Like
Speaker 2: I've walked into at night, Like you're just walking by
Speaker 2: and you have this little container where you have firefly larvae. Right,
Speaker 2: everybody has this in their house.
Speaker 1: Oh the delight. It brought me to think of a
Speaker 1: firefly expert tossing their mail onto a kitchen counternext to
Speaker 1: a deli cup of thriving larvae. Sarah just has these
Speaker 1: things in her casual possession. Of course, man if I
Speaker 1: had a container of firefly larvae for every container of
Speaker 1: firefly larva I had in my house, oh.
Speaker 2: And a couple of earthworms. And you see that there's
Speaker 2: all this glowing and they're all lined up along the earthworm,
Speaker 2: and all the firefly larvae are glowing and they're all
Speaker 2: they just have their jaws sunk into the earthworm, and
Speaker 2: the earthworm isn't moving at all, and they're lined up like,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like suckling pigs. They're just like
Speaker 2: all line end up sucking earthworm like an earthworm smoothie.
Speaker 2: It's it's a little it's a little alarming and slightly disgusting,
Speaker 2: but anyways, that's what that's the that's the backstory of
Speaker 2: those ethereal adults is that they are larvae for up
Speaker 2: to two years, depending on the latitude, and during that
Speaker 2: time they're just they're just you know, they're just eating
Speaker 2: and growing, eating and growing, eating and growing, and then
Speaker 2: when they get big enough, they pupate, you know, kind
Speaker 2: of like a butterfly, the metamorphose into an adult. The
Speaker 2: adult fireflies only live a couple of weeks, so very
Speaker 2: very short lived, and all they're doing is reproducing. Most
Speaker 2: adult fireflies don't eat anything at all once they once
Speaker 2: they reach that stage, and so they're spending down the
Speaker 2: capital that they have accumulated. All the resources that they've
Speaker 2: managed to accumulate as larvae is getting spent down in
Speaker 2: all of their reproductive activity. They're flying around their nuptial gifts.
Speaker 2: So the nuptial gifts are kind of a big thing
Speaker 2: in the firefly economics right because they're expensive for males
Speaker 2: to produce. They're spending down their capital with every nuptial
Speaker 2: gift that they're making, and they're really valuable for females
Speaker 2: because she doesn't have any other income. It's just a
Speaker 2: nuptial gift.
Speaker 1: So, wow, just revisit this drama with me, if you
Speaker 1: will come on this journey. So let's say you're a baby.
Speaker 1: You're a human baby, a small, chubby baby who must grow.
Speaker 1: So you post up with other babies around a giant
Speaker 1: paralyzed worm, like a beached whale, and you and all
Speaker 1: these babies just devour this whale like carcass until it's gone,
Speaker 1: and you do this for years. Imagine if humans spent
Speaker 1: most of our lifespans in focused bloodlust eating raw meat,
Speaker 1: and then in the very twilight of life, like when
Speaker 1: we're eighty, we finally go through puberty and for the
Speaker 1: equivalent of like the last year of our human lives,
Speaker 1: out comes a different looking person with a glowing disco
Speaker 1: ass that makes people so horny and the world loves us.
Speaker 1: We're so beautiful, people assume we're not even real. And
Speaker 1: then all that flesh we ate all of our lives
Speaker 1: as babies. We use that fuel to pay baby mamas
Speaker 1: so the kids will never meet, can survive and follow
Speaker 1: in our sparkly footsteps, I mean, firefly life cycles. What
Speaker 1: a party? Do scientists know why they glow certain colors?
Speaker 1: And where is that bioluminescence coming from? I'm sure your
Speaker 1: background is a marine biologist. A lot of glowing stuff
Speaker 1: in the sea where it's dark, but not a lot
Speaker 1: of glowing stuff up here, so it seems so what's
Speaker 1: it made out of?
Speaker 2: A lot of creatures have independently evolved this amazing, fantastic
Speaker 2: ability to produce their own light. It's really fabulous. So
Speaker 2: among terrestrial animals and plants, there's not that many that
Speaker 2: can produce lights, even though produce their own light, even
Speaker 2: though it's really common in the sea. In the sea,
Speaker 2: a lot of marine creatures use their light for as
Speaker 2: a defense or as a way of hiding camouflage, or
Speaker 2: as a way to attract prey, and fireflies use their
Speaker 2: light in many of the same ways. So every single
Speaker 2: juvenile firefly, those baby fireflies I was talking about that
Speaker 2: live underground or in leaf litter, they actually every single
Speaker 2: juvenile firefly can light up even when the adults can't.
Speaker 2: And so we think that the ability this light producing
Speaker 2: talent of fireflies first evolved in the juvenile stage, and
Speaker 2: that it first evolved as a warning signal. So firefly
Speaker 2: larvae and a lot of adult fireflies taste really nasty.
Speaker 2: They manufacture toxins that they carry inside their body that
Speaker 2: are distasteful to many insect eating predators. And so you know,
Speaker 2: if you live in the dark and there's no reflected light,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really help to be like brightly colored like
Speaker 2: a monarch butterfly.
Speaker 1: Or say brightly colored poisoned dart frogs or skunk stripes.
Speaker 1: So this yo you do not want. This type of
Speaker 1: coloration has a name, and it's aposemitism, taken from the
Speaker 1: Greek words for away sign and Aposemitism was coined in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety by a British zoologist who had a mustache
Speaker 1: like a snow white feather, boa Sir Edward Bagnailed Poulton
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety because one of the pleasures of being
Speaker 1: an animal scientist is that you can make up words
Speaker 1: when you identify the need for them, like sparkle botology.
Speaker 2: All of those usual warning colors don't really work. But
Speaker 2: if you can make a flash of light that turns
Speaker 2: out to be a very very memorable kind of warning
Speaker 2: signal that flashes out in the darkness, you know I
Speaker 2: am toxic. Do not even think about eating me. And
Speaker 2: so it was so the first fireflies. By reconstructing their
Speaker 2: evolutionary history, we have figured out scientists have figured out
Speaker 2: that the very first fireflies, the adults, didn't light up
Speaker 2: at all, and it wasn't until many million years later
Speaker 2: that adult, some adult fireflies managed to co opt that
Speaker 2: larval bioluminescence and turn it into the quick, bright flashes
Speaker 2: that the flashing fireflies now used to find their mates.
Speaker 2: So fireflies started out warning signal and then later on
Speaker 2: turned it to courtship.
Speaker 1: It's kind of romantic, right, Imagine a dating app. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're toxic. I'm toxic, and then you
Speaker 1: just can't stop sending texts with your thoughts. That's the
Speaker 1: firefly life. And this week, doctor Sarah Lewis would like
Speaker 1: her ologies donation to keep these lovers alive via the
Speaker 1: zerse Society, which is a wonderful nonprofit that has so
Speaker 1: many resources for conservation, including god on native plants to
Speaker 1: help out our favorite critters, light pollution effects and guidelines
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about later, and so much
Speaker 1: outreach and education. So learn more at zersees dot org
Speaker 1: x er ces dot org. And that donation we made
Speaker 1: in her name was possible by some word approved sponsors
Speaker 1: of the show, who you may hear about. Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: you were in the dark with some firefly facts and
Speaker 1: Sarah had illuminating answers. Let's hear them. I have so
Speaker 1: many questions from listeners. Megan Walker wants to know if
Speaker 1: you clap or make noise, do they flash. My dad
Speaker 1: told me that as a kid, and it mostly seems
Speaker 1: to work, but I'm also skeptical that it's just coincidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So fireflies respond to a threat by often respond
Speaker 2: to a threat by making light because it is a
Speaker 2: warning signal. And so if you have a firefly and
Speaker 2: it's you know, just kind of hanging out in a container,
Speaker 2: and you vibrate that container or knock on it or
Speaker 2: you know, slap the side of the container, a firefly
Speaker 2: will often flash. And so it's possible that clapping might
Speaker 2: be perceived as a disturbance and they would they would
Speaker 2: light up as a way of saying, hey, don't eat me,
Speaker 2: I'm here. You know I'm toxic.
Speaker 1: Can you not do that?
Speaker 2: Got it?
Speaker 1: Okay? So many people wanted to know about catching them
Speaker 1: and if you catch them and put them in a
Speaker 1: jar with with grass, how bad is it for them?
Speaker 1: And will they die immediately?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I think it's actually, you know, I love that people
Speaker 2: catch fireflies and then release them. I think it's a
Speaker 2: really it's a beautiful thing. I think the more people
Speaker 2: that can appreciate these miraculous luminous beings the better. And
Speaker 2: what better way to do it than to like get
Speaker 2: up close and personal with them. So yeah, I think
Speaker 2: that as long as people realize that, you know, if
Speaker 2: you catch a firefly, handle it, really catch it with
Speaker 2: a net, handle it, really gently coax it into a
Speaker 2: jar with some as you say, with grass, maybe a
Speaker 2: little bit of damp not like sopping wet, but damp
Speaker 2: paper towel, even a little tiny piece of apple. They'll
Speaker 2: really really like the moisture from the apple and the
Speaker 2: sugars that are in the apple. And you know, watch
Speaker 2: them overnight, make sure they have a lot of moisture
Speaker 2: in the jar, and then let them go into the
Speaker 2: same habitat where you collected them the next day. The
Speaker 2: only so I'm all in favor of catch and release
Speaker 2: for fireflies. There's one caution that I have to mention,
Speaker 2: which is that this happened to my nephew many years ago.
Speaker 2: He was visiting from California. He was visiting in Vermont,
Speaker 2: and he was really excited to see fireflies, and he
Speaker 2: went out and he caught a whole bunch and he
Speaker 2: put him in a jar, and he put them on
Speaker 2: the night table next to his bed, and during the
Speaker 2: night he woke up and he actually saw a very
Speaker 2: very gory scene, which is pretty common. Some of the
Speaker 2: fireflies were eating some of the other fireflies. So I
Speaker 2: haven't really mentioned this, but there's a particular group of
Speaker 2: fireflies just in North America. Yeah, we're proud and they
Speaker 2: are predators of other fireflies, and what was going on
Speaker 2: in Nate's jar was that he had accidentally caught some
Speaker 2: of the prey fireflies and a couple of the predator fireflies,
Speaker 2: and the predator fireflies were like so excited and they
Speaker 2: were feasting on the other fireflies, and he was like,
Speaker 2: he screamed in the middle of the night. We had
Speaker 2: to get up and go running into his room. He
Speaker 2: was fine, the fireflies were not. And then we had
Speaker 2: to explain like the whole you know, predation thing, and yeah,
Speaker 2: so be careful to only include the little guys and
Speaker 2: none of the big predatory ones.
Speaker 1: Oh no, so yes, faux tourists. These predatory females, whom
Speaker 1: Sarah has called them fatale of lightning bugs, are great
Speaker 1: at doings of other species, but they're not great at
Speaker 1: making their own lusibufhagens lusiboofageens sure, which are steroid compounds
Speaker 1: that make them less tasty to birds and spiders and such.
Speaker 1: So catfishing and preying on other glowing beetles gives them
Speaker 1: more defense against predators. So for those who wish that
Speaker 1: there were raves that were also gladiatorial matches, congratulations Sichos
Speaker 1: your time has arrived. Dave is Born, Andy Hardkey, Kevin Glover,
Speaker 1: Lisa Ma. Want to know why do they smell that way?
Speaker 2: Do they? So? Yes, that's so interesting, what great questions.
Speaker 2: Thank you all. So, when you handle fireflies, they do
Speaker 2: give off a particular odor, and that odor is part
Speaker 2: of their sort of we call it a multimodal defense mechanism,
Speaker 2: but it's they have the light that they're using as
Speaker 2: a warning. They have a kind of smell, a volatile
Speaker 2: smell that they release that warns potential predators that they
Speaker 2: are going to taste bad. And then if you were
Speaker 2: to taste the firefly, which I don't recommend you would,
Speaker 2: or even like, you know, gently bite into a firefly,
Speaker 2: which I don't recommend, fireflies release a tiny droplet of blood,
Speaker 2: and the blood that circulates inside their bodies contains a
Speaker 2: toxin that is very very deadly to many vertebrate predators.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that smell is something that a lot of
Speaker 2: people don't even notice it, but it's really really noticeable.
Speaker 2: If you hold a firefly in your hand, just hold
Speaker 2: it up to your nose. They get disturbed if you're
Speaker 2: capturing them, and then they have that particular odor and yeah,
Speaker 2: that's cool. It's the part of their defense against getting eaten.
Speaker 1: Side note, I have never sniffed a peni wally, but
Speaker 1: the Internet told me that they smell like the follow
Speaker 1: adjectives musky, cucumber esque, and buggy. Oh yes, buggy. It's
Speaker 1: very helpful either way. The taste and those aforementioned lusibufagen
Speaker 1: steroids can make a frog or a bird thing twice
Speaker 1: and maybe barfit right up. Although plenty of folks report
Speaker 1: seeing fireflies illuminating the stomachs of their predators, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like being eaten by an alligator yet continuing
Speaker 1: to swipe on tinder from its murky, disgusting belly. But yes,
Speaker 1: that sparkle buttology smell is the sweet odor of love
Speaker 1: and warnings.
Speaker 2: Aha, So sniff a firefly yeah or tonight? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: Ntella wants to know why do fireflies like overgrown grass
Speaker 1: more than cut grass and what can people with yards
Speaker 1: do to encourage more fireflies?
Speaker 2: Absolutely so. One of the things about fireflies is that
Speaker 2: they need the same kind of things that all of
Speaker 2: us need, right So, they need food, they need shelter,
Speaker 2: they need moisture, and so if you can provide those things,
Speaker 2: you can usually encourage fireflies if they're around in your
Speaker 2: area to move into your yard. And so one really
Speaker 2: important thing for all of the stages of all the
Speaker 2: life stages of the firefly is moisture. And so longer
Speaker 2: grass holds moisture better, it holds moisture in the soil better,
Speaker 2: and it will be more conducive for females to lay
Speaker 2: their eggs in at the base of the grass and
Speaker 2: for the larvae to develop in that habitat. It's also
Speaker 2: better for longer grasses, better for all the soil organisms
Speaker 2: like the earthworms and all those things that the baby
Speaker 2: fireflies are eating as prey. I guess the biggest thing
Speaker 2: if you want to promote fireflies in your in your
Speaker 2: yard is to leave your grass long or better yet
Speaker 2: make it into a wildflower meadow. Oh, plants, fireflies also
Speaker 2: need darkness. So a lot of the work that we
Speaker 2: are currently doing at my lab at TOUGHS focuses on
Speaker 2: light pollution and how light pollution impacts fireflies. And it
Speaker 2: turns out that lights, even pretty dim lights, can really
Speaker 2: really disrupt the courtschip dialogue of fireflies. And so if
Speaker 2: you have like layers of shrubs and trees. If you
Speaker 2: happen to have street lights around or other lights that
Speaker 2: are shiny into your yard, having a lot of layers
Speaker 2: of vegetation will help make dark places where the fireflies
Speaker 2: can court.
Speaker 1: So you're not letting your lawn go to shit. You're
Speaker 1: making a romantic environment where sparklelet beetles can get nasty.
Speaker 1: So what else do you need to do to set
Speaker 1: the mood and help them thrive?
Speaker 2: So fireflies need dark lights, they need moisture, and they
Speaker 2: also fireflies are insects, and so you definitely do not
Speaker 2: want to be treating your yard or your garden with
Speaker 2: any kind of broad spectrum insecticides because anything that you remember,
Speaker 2: the baby fireflies spend months to years living underground. So
Speaker 2: if you're treating your yard, or if you happen to
Speaker 2: have a lawn and you're treating it for Japanese beetle grubs,
Speaker 2: you're going to be killing the firefly larvae that live
Speaker 2: in the lawn too. So be really really thoughtful about
Speaker 2: using insecticides only where and when you need them, try
Speaker 2: to target them to specific pests. And then also in
Speaker 2: addition to sort of shad shading your yard, if you
Speaker 2: have a place where there's fireflies and you can control
Speaker 2: the light in that firefly habitat. Just turn your lights
Speaker 2: off during the firefly mating season, give them a little privacy,
Speaker 2: you know, let do their thing, and then you know,
Speaker 2: in the wintertime you can have your lights back on
Speaker 2: again as much as you want. But if you can
Speaker 2: shield your lights or dim them, or put them on
Speaker 2: timers so that they're off during the firefly mating season,
Speaker 2: that would be really that's a great way to attract
Speaker 2: fireflies to your yard.
Speaker 1: Great Alexis Cully, first time question asker wants to know
Speaker 1: if any fireflies flash different colors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are slightly different colors and they so
Speaker 2: there are tiny, tiny differences in the shape of the
Speaker 2: enzyme luciferace that produces that's inside the firefly lantern, and
Speaker 2: that is one of the players that produces the actually
Speaker 2: is a catalyst for the bioluminescence, and so tiny differences
Speaker 2: in the shape of that enzyme actually create different colors.
Speaker 2: And so in North America we have fireflies that range
Speaker 2: from yellow. So a lot of the fireflies that are
Speaker 2: flashing in the early evening have sort of a line
Speaker 2: green or yellow color. By iluminescence. There's other groups of
Speaker 2: fireflies that have a more amber colored by iluminescence, and
Speaker 2: then there's some late night fireflies that flash with a
Speaker 2: very green biluminescence, and so they do have different colors.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, do any change their colors like an led
Speaker 1: light at all loud?
Speaker 2: That would be cool. Not yet, but I think they're
Speaker 2: working on it. We're looking at for mutations right now.
Speaker 1: Oh amazing, so many great questions. Casey Hanmer wrote in
Speaker 1: and said, I think lucifer As is an amazing name
Speaker 1: for a child, but my wife says, no, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: Help me out.
Speaker 2: Yes, lucifras, I love it. Yeah, you know, hey, Ace, Yes,
Speaker 2: it's great.
Speaker 1: That is great. And it means light, right, Lucifera comes
Speaker 1: means light great.
Speaker 2: Right, Lucifras means light bearer. It's a beautiful name for
Speaker 2: a kid.
Speaker 1: Also, how Satan biblic became lucifer may have just been
Speaker 1: the results of a translation snafu involving the Hebrew word
Speaker 1: for howell. So Casey Christine named that next kid lucifer race.
Speaker 1: Do you have our blessing? And Patron Nathan Algrim wrote
Speaker 1: in to say that they saw their first blue ghosts
Speaker 1: this summer, and it was quote trippy in the best
Speaker 1: way possible. And I'm glad for Nathan that this experience
Speaker 1: wasn't trippy in the worst way possible, which would have
Speaker 1: been an encounter with how Lucifer himself. But yes, you
Speaker 1: were not alone when it came to wondering about blue
Speaker 1: ghost fireflies and why they are such low flying marvels.
Speaker 1: Oh and Milakuda wants to know what's the deal with
Speaker 1: blue ghost fireflies?
Speaker 2: M hmm, the deal with blue ghost fireflies? They are magic,
Speaker 2: totally magic. So this is a firefly that's found throughout
Speaker 2: the southeastern United States in the southern Appalachian Mountains, and
Speaker 2: they're really really cool because they're a glowworm firefly. The
Speaker 2: females are tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny tiny. They don't have
Speaker 2: any wings, they cannot fly. They are totally earthbound, which
Speaker 2: is sad, but they're also really beautiful. They're like these
Speaker 2: beautiful little jewels that are hidden in the forest and
Speaker 2: the leaf litter in the forest. The males light up
Speaker 2: in this case and they fly around with a very
Speaker 2: very long, like minutes long glow, and for reasons that
Speaker 2: remain a bit elusive, but have something to do with
Speaker 2: sort of the physics of light. Their light looks blue,
Speaker 2: but if you record the light with a spect like
Speaker 2: a spectrograph, it actually turns out to be green. Oh,
Speaker 2: so they're called blue ghosts because they look kind of
Speaker 2: bluish when they're when it's reflected off the vegetation and so,
Speaker 2: but they're really glowing green. And one of the things
Speaker 2: about the blue ghost fireflies that's quite remarkable is that
Speaker 2: they've gotten to be a pretty big tourist attraction in
Speaker 2: the past few years, and fireflies in many places are
Speaker 2: actually kind of flickering out. In most cases, it's because
Speaker 2: their habitat is being lost. In some cases it's because
Speaker 2: their local population is being threatened by either light pollution
Speaker 2: or even tourism. And so the blue ghost fireflies are
Speaker 2: particularly susceptible to too much attention from tourists. When the
Speaker 2: season begins, the females are down in the leaf litter
Speaker 2: and on the forest floor, and so if there's a
Speaker 2: lot of people who are walking through their habitat, they
Speaker 2: actually don't. They're often looking at the males that are
Speaker 2: flying around and not really realizing that they could be
Speaker 2: accidentally trampling these tiny females and also the larvae, and
Speaker 2: also the eggs, and also the pupi, And it's the
Speaker 2: females that are carrying like the next generation of fireflies.
Speaker 2: So when people going to see blue ghost fireflies, I
Speaker 2: do highly recommend going to see them, but stay on
Speaker 2: the trail, don't walk off into the forest because you
Speaker 2: might be trampling on those beautiful little females.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then, which is probably the last thing people
Speaker 1: want to be doing without realizing that they're doing it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, you wouldn't. How would you ever know? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Patrons Alie Gibson, first time question asker, Ivally Sanchez, Chris Moore,
Speaker 1: Ali barg Rose, Moonyards, Kent Dervin, and so many people.
Speaker 1: Claire Weldon, Tiagan Mortimer, first time question asker Anthony, Katie Courtwright,
Speaker 1: Alex Stall have said wanted to know about the numbers
Speaker 1: of fireflies. Anthony says, why is it some years we
Speaker 1: have tons and tons and other years almost none? And
Speaker 1: Claire says I've heard a lot the last few years
Speaker 1: about major declines and firefly populations. Alex Stall says, growing up,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing fireflies all the time, but it's been
Speaker 1: ages since I saw any how are they doing and
Speaker 1: what can we do to help?
Speaker 2: Great questions? Yeah, thank you. So, you know, like other insects,
Speaker 2: fireflies have good years and bad years, and so in
Speaker 2: a really really dry year, there's a lot of mortality,
Speaker 2: especially of the larvae, and so there won't be as
Speaker 2: many fireflies. The adult fireflies are merging the following spring
Speaker 2: and summer, and sometimes in a wet year, you know,
Speaker 2: there's lots of prey. There's they're doing really the larva
Speaker 2: are surviving really well. There'll be a lot of fireflies
Speaker 2: that year, and so they do have good years and
Speaker 2: bad years. But in general, it's a really really common perception,
Speaker 2: and it's something that a lot of firefly experts and
Speaker 2: you know, people on the street have noticed that there
Speaker 2: just aren't as many fireflies as there used to be.
Speaker 2: And this holds across the board around the world. It's
Speaker 2: not just, you know, something that happens in the in
Speaker 2: the United States. And so there are three major things
Speaker 2: that are responsible for declining firefly populations. The first one
Speaker 2: is the loss of suitable habitat. So some fireflies are
Speaker 2: really really tuned into a very particular habitat, like one
Speaker 2: particular kind of wetland, and that's the only place that
Speaker 2: they can survive. That's where their larvae live, that's where
Speaker 2: the where they can pupate, where they can complete their
Speaker 2: whole life cycle. If you wipe out that wetland, those
Speaker 2: fireflies can't just get up and move somewhere else. There
Speaker 2: are other fireflies that are like habitat generalists. They can
Speaker 2: live in all kinds of places. They're doing fine. The
Speaker 2: habitat specialists are not doing so well.
Speaker 1: So yes, some sparkle butts do well sauntering between various habitats,
Speaker 1: but other tender glowy babies have evolved to thrive in
Speaker 1: only one specific ecological niche.
Speaker 2: So the loss in the degradation of appropriate habitat is
Speaker 2: a really, really big problem for many species of firefly,
Speaker 2: including a bunch of US fireflies that are lists in
Speaker 2: wetland habitats. The second thing that is really bad for
Speaker 2: fireflies we've already talked about a little bit. They need
Speaker 2: dark nights, and so light pollution is a big threat
Speaker 2: to fireflies around the world. And so you can turn
Speaker 2: off your lights. That's a that's an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2: Light pollution is totally reversible right, just turn out switch.
Speaker 2: And then insecticides is that is a third major threat
Speaker 2: to fireflies, So pesticides that are applied to the soil
Speaker 2: or to plants that then get into the soil and
Speaker 2: will kill firefly larvae. So I guess you know. One
Speaker 2: of the things that that we've been doing. So I
Speaker 2: work with the group called Fireflyers International, and one of
Speaker 2: the things that we have been doing is trying to
Speaker 2: educate people about the different life stay fireflies, the things
Speaker 2: that they need, and to advocate for their protection. We've
Speaker 2: been working with the Zerxi Society in the US, and
Speaker 2: you can go to the Zerxi Society website just google
Speaker 2: Xerxes fireflies and there's a whole lot of information free
Speaker 2: PDFs that you can download about conserving fireflies and what
Speaker 2: you can do too, and there's actually we have fact
Speaker 2: sheets about fireflies and light pollution, so firefly friendly lighting guidelines,
Speaker 2: and you can get all that stuff at the zerxies website.
Speaker 1: Listen, I get it. You're listening to this while paddling
Speaker 1: a gondola or hurting penguins and you're like, you're my
Speaker 1: internet dad, look it up for me. So Zerceies recommends
Speaker 1: using motion detectors or timers to limit the amount of
Speaker 1: time lights shine, shielding lights so they only illuminate the
Speaker 1: intended areas like a pathway, switching out right outdoor lighting
Speaker 1: for red bulbs, or covering existing bulbs with red filters,
Speaker 1: and closing curtains at night to reduce the amount of
Speaker 1: indoor lights that spill outdoors. So more info is up
Speaker 1: at sirces dot org. And also get doctor Sarah Lewis's
Speaker 1: book Silencepark, which is linked in the show notes. It
Speaker 1: will delight and inform you. Also, I just realized when
Speaker 1: I said herting penguins, that sounded like herting penguins. But
Speaker 1: I'm not, like there's a herd of penguins that you're
Speaker 1: I don't want to make sounding years out there hurting penguins. Anyway,
Speaker 1: What else can you do? Are there any community science
Speaker 1: projects that people can help out with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's so much we don't know about fireflies. So,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, there's especially a lot we don't know
Speaker 2: about fireflies in the Western US, and so I highly
Speaker 2: recommend the Western Firefly Project. Just google it and they're
Speaker 2: collecting right now, collecting observations from people all over the
Speaker 2: West of flashing fireflies, and that's really exciting. There's a
Speaker 2: new Mexico Firefly Project that just started this year, and
Speaker 2: that's really exciting. People are discovering like all new fireflies.
Speaker 2: We never even knew that they were in some of
Speaker 2: these places, So there's a lot of Really it's a
Speaker 2: very exciting time to be a community scientist for fireflies.
Speaker 2: We really fireflies are out for a short time each
Speaker 2: night and also a short season each year, and so
Speaker 2: we really need many eyes in many places. So those
Speaker 2: are two things, the Western Firefly Project and the New
Speaker 2: Mexico Firefly Project. And then also across all of the
Speaker 2: US there is Firefly Watch which is run by Massachusetts
Speaker 2: autubn Society and you can find out more about that
Speaker 2: community science project on their website.
Speaker 1: Oh and what about photography, any hints on capturing good
Speaker 1: firefly photos?
Speaker 2: Yes, so I would like to say that personally, I
Speaker 2: am in awe of the many, many firefly photographers out
Speaker 2: there who capture these beautiful, long exposure images of fireflies.
Speaker 2: And in these images you can often see the flash
Speaker 2: pattern of the firefly. You can almost identify what species
Speaker 2: of firefly it is from the photograph. But I have
Speaker 2: no idea how they do that.
Speaker 1: It's okay. I looked up some tips for us. So basically,
Speaker 1: get a tripod, slow down the shutter speed, open your
Speaker 1: lens up wide, and crank up your camera's sensitivity to
Speaker 1: light or it's ISO. And if you don't have a
Speaker 1: fancy camera that is also not a phone, then there
Speaker 1: are apps like PROCM eight that have presets like low
Speaker 1: light and light trails, and you can also do a
Speaker 1: slow shutter mode which stacks a bunch of images on
Speaker 1: top of each other to create a longer exposure effect.
Speaker 1: But patience and experimentation, maybe a late night energy drink
Speaker 1: I'll help, or you know what, just leave it to
Speaker 1: the pros.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'll just put a a shout out here to
Speaker 2: one of the firefly photographers we've worked with very closely
Speaker 2: on our conservation efforts has a website. It's called Firefly Experience.
Speaker 2: His name is Redeem Schreiber, and he takes pictures of
Speaker 2: fireflies using just their natural light, never any flash, never
Speaker 2: any extraneous light. And his photographs are really they're amazing,
Speaker 2: and they really capture the personality of each of the
Speaker 2: different kinds of fireflies. So I highly recommend firefly experience cool.
Speaker 1: Last listener question, Sarah Hoover, Cameron Brown, and R. J.
Speaker 1: Deroage all asked if you have thoughts on the song
Speaker 1: Fireflies by Al City if it ever gets stuck in
Speaker 1: your head? Have you heard of that that's so funny?
Speaker 2: Yes? I don't really like that song because you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know the ten thousand hug stuff because I
Speaker 2: get hugs from ten thousand. Yeah, it's not my favorite
Speaker 2: firefly song. You know, there's a really cool there's a
Speaker 2: glow worm song that was popular I guess in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. My mother used to sing it to me
Speaker 2: when I was little. Hey, maybe that's why I study firefly. Anyways,
Speaker 2: Mill's Brothers glow Worm song. I like that one a
Speaker 2: whole lot better.
Speaker 4: This night used a little riding light up you little
Speaker 4: about dove lightning. When you gotta glue, you gotta clube
Speaker 4: blue little?
Speaker 1: Did we just discover why Sarah Lewis is a firefly scientist?
Speaker 1: Did that just happen? I don't know. I guess either way.
Speaker 1: Singing to your loved ones ask smart people weird but
Speaker 1: well intentioned questions, because you never know what's underneath the rocks.
Speaker 1: On the topic of last questions, I always ask everyone
Speaker 1: your least favorite thing about being a sparkle batologist or
Speaker 1: least favorite thing about firefly. Is there anything that's just
Speaker 1: an annoyance or you wish was different.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's undoubtedly mosquitoes. So there's a really high
Speaker 2: correlation between you know, fireflies like places where there's a
Speaker 2: lot of moisture and so the mosquitoes and it's nighttime,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I think the hardest thing for a
Speaker 2: lot of my students and for myself working on fireflies
Speaker 2: is just like not necessarily like the mosquitoes are going
Speaker 2: to bite you, because usually you're covered up completely long sleeves.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we wear rubber gloves and we have like mosquito
Speaker 2: gear on, anti mosquito gear on. But it's a sound
Speaker 2: of the mosquitoes that little you know, that wine, and
Speaker 2: it just like sometimes I would go to sleep finally
Speaker 2: after a really long night and I'd still like in
Speaker 2: my dreams, I would hear that whine of the mosquitoes
Speaker 2: just like buzzing around my head. And yeah, that was
Speaker 2: really kind of traumatic for a couple of years in there.
Speaker 1: And lastly difficult to answer, but your favorite thing about
Speaker 1: fireflies or being a firefly scientist.
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, so this is easy because you know the
Speaker 2: thing that I really really appreciate. I just feel so
Speaker 2: fortunate to be able to like have devoted so much
Speaker 2: of my scientific career to studying such a wondrous animal.
Speaker 2: Like you just like every single season, you know, I do,
Speaker 2: you know, my science and like write all the notes
Speaker 2: and take all the measurements and stuff. But every single
Speaker 2: season I always spend at least one night that I
Speaker 2: just dedicate to wonder. I don't. I just like put
Speaker 2: everything else out of my mind and I just go
Speaker 2: out and gawk at the fireflies and just drinking the wonder.
Speaker 2: And man, it's a really incredible thing. And it's not
Speaker 2: just you know that they don't just bring that wonder
Speaker 2: to me, but to everybody who sees them. So you know,
Speaker 2: they are some of the best ambassadors for Earth's natural magic.
Speaker 2: And so man, I feel so lucky to be, like,
Speaker 2: you know, representing them to and telling people about them
Speaker 2: and learning more about them. It's just like I just
Speaker 2: feel like super super super grateful to the fireflies, lucky
Speaker 2: to have found this niche.
Speaker 1: Well, they I think they're lucky to have a spokesperson
Speaker 1: as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic as you.
Speaker 2: For sure, You're very kind.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you so much for doing this. This
Speaker 1: is just a joy. I love this.
Speaker 2: It's been really really fun. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: inviting me.
Speaker 1: So yes, get Sarah Lewis's book, Silent Spark. It's linked
Speaker 1: in the show notes below. You can follow her on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Silent Underscore Spark. Her website is Silent Sparks,
Speaker 1: and also check out zercees dot org. We are at
Speaker 1: olige on Twitter and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one
Speaker 1: L on both. Come say hi. There are more links
Speaker 1: up at aliward dot com, slash ologies slash sparkle biology
Speaker 1: because that's what doctor Lewis said and I love it.
Speaker 1: Thank you Aaron Talbert for admitting theologies podcast Facebook group.
Speaker 1: Thank you Shannon Feltis and this week's birthday Lady Bonnie
Speaker 1: Dutch are you here here here airhorns out of my
Speaker 1: mouth of the podcast? You are that for helping handle merch.
Speaker 1: Emily White of the Wordery makes professional transcripts very well,
Speaker 1: and Caleb Patton bleeps episodes and those are downloadable and
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Speaker 1: the transcripts are to Noel Dilworth and Susan Hale make
Speaker 1: sure the trains run on time and help with quizzes
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Speaker 1: Late Night post Honeymoon trip editing by husband and hunk
Speaker 1: Jared Sleeper of mind Jam Media and Seek. Thomas Rodriguez
Speaker 1: edits down the Smologies episodes that are coming out now
Speaker 1: every other Thursday, and longtime editor of course is Stephen
Speaker 1: Ray Morris of the podcast see Jurassic Right and the
Speaker 1: per Cast. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music, Happy Birthday
Speaker 1: to my sister Celeste. Eltis herself a glowing being in
Speaker 1: the night. And if you stick around until the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this
Speaker 1: week we did a lot of driving through Montana, which
Speaker 1: in which gambling is legal in that state. And whenever
Speaker 1: I see a casino billboard that advertises loose slots, I
Speaker 1: always think of just terrible food poisoning, just like eating
Speaker 1: bad shrimp from the buffet at Heaven. Loose slots all weekend.
Speaker 1: Just shine to the jackpot if you will. Anyway, it's gross,
Speaker 1: I can't remember I've told you that before, but now
Speaker 1: you know. Sorry for bye.
Speaker 3: Pacodermatology, homeology, crypto zoology, lithology, niology, meteorology, oology, nathology, ceriology, sclinology.
Speaker 2: Especially fireflies or butts light up.