![]() ![]() But the choice to open any of the world’s most spectacular firefly sites to the public focuses these same pressures to a sharp point. The interest gives scientists like Lower hope that funding and conservation will follow, because fireflies-like other dark-dependent invertebrates-are succumbing to our society’s penchant for sterile lawns and careless nighttime lighting. It was a dazzling scene, and one that hundreds of people would soon flock here to see as the Firefly Festival got under way.Īround the world, firefly tourism is surging in popularity. Their flashes merged with the stars into a doubly scintillating reflection in the water below. From the base of the island to the tree canopy, a galaxy of fireflies shone in drifts or brief flashes, complemented by a starry sky overhead. “These are the ‘I’m angry’ lights,” Lower explained.Ĭlumsy in the dark but reluctant to spoil our night vision with flashlights, we meandered along the creek to where a bridge spanned the water, overlooking an island spiked with conifers. Irritated or alarmed, the captured firefly switched to a faster pulse, reminiscent of a car alarm. A student snagged one in a net, marveling at its size-several times larger than the species they’d already collected. Each flash set the fireflies aglow for long beats of unearthly green so bright they illuminated surrounding vegetation. Twilight drained away the last notes of color, a dullness almost immediately punctuated by a yet-undescribed firefly species from the genus Photuris, nicknamed “Chinese lanterns” by Lower and her team. Heading across Pennsylvania Route 666 and past a modest farmhouse, we reached a small path leading down to Tionesta Creek, which parallels the road. But the darker it got, the more they came to resemble dust motes twinkling in invisible sunbeams. marginellus typically flash in flight, while females wait below on blades of grass, shooting answering flashes at only the most compelling suitors.Īt first, these early-evening species looked almost like pixels of static. Like other species of fireflies, males of P. ![]() Males buzzed around one patch of goldenrod, blinking quick winks at the sitting females who deigned to flash back. Just a few feet away, near a pond ringed by cattails where a beaver lazed face up, the students caught Photinus marginellus, a quick single flasher. Her students, meanwhile, netted their way down a wish list of research samples.įirst up was Photinus macdermotti, a firefly species that emits two quick flashes. Moving from habitat to habitat as the evening deepened, Lower narrated which species we saw and their different behaviors. Once the cloudy sky blushed red from its last glimpse of the setting sun, I set out with Lower and her students toward the forest edge. This postindustrial expanse of second-growth trees and hills pimpled with oil wells also happens to rank among the world’s best places to see fireflies. A group of Lower’s students from Bucknell University hung around her, armed with butterfly nets and stopwatches for counting the time between firefly flashes-a way to differentiate between the multiple lightning-bug species that live here at the edge of Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest. One dusky June evening, two days before the 2022 Pennsylvania Firefly Festival, the biologist Sarah Lower sat on a back porch, watching the sky for a specific gradation of twilight. This article was originally published in bioGraphic. ![]()
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