Comment by dabluecaboose
3 days ago
Reminds me of the "discovery" of synchronous fireflies in 1990:
>Scientists got wise to the presence of synchronous fireflies in the U.S. in the 1990’s, thanks to the efforts of Faust, a citizen naturalist. “Growing up in east Tennessee, we called them lightning bugs. They're just part of summer,” she says.
In the early 1990’s, Faust read an article in a science news magazine that said there were no synchronous fireflies in the Western Hemisphere. “I thought, ‘Ours are synchronous – who do I tell this to?’” she recalls.
She wrote a letter to researchers, who came to Tennessee and studied those fireflies for the next twenty years.
[src] https://www.npr.org/2024/05/24/g-s1-935/synchronous-fireflie...
There's a lot of stuff in the world that's unique and special, but isn't common knowledge on the internet. I think more people should go out and look around for themselves!
Same deal when we "discover" new ruins in the Central American rainforests; the locals are often very aware of their existence.
I didn't realize all fireflies didn't tend to synchronized. Fun read. Fireflies are one of the only "bugs" from the south that I miss. Cicadas, I suppose, have a bit of a soft spot with me. Everything else... nope.
Cicadas are so bizarre. A couple of summers ago I was around Des Moines and Ames, IA and was completely baffled by the strange noise that seemed to be everywhere and yet impossible to localize. After a few days I heard someone talking about the cicadas and learned something new!
Be careful standing underneath a tree involved in ._cicida rain_.
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As I always tell my kids, aren't you glad they are the size they are instead of the size of a car!
Come visit Japan in August; the cicadas are so loud throughout most of the country that you have to raise your voice to be heard.
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How far north are you? We get them around Albany, NY. The big thing is having a forest-meadow boundary, where fallen leaves aren't removed. If you're surrounded by grass lawns & concrete where people rake & remove the leaves fireflies could lay their eggs in, you won't get fireflies.
Fair, it is not "north" that is my limiting factor. It is being in the Pacific North West. As another poster has said, we have some glowing bugs. Nothing like fireflies, though.
And I hasten to add, plenty of other amazing creatures.
what area are you located in now? We have fireflies in Michigan, cicadas as well
Pacific Northwest. And fair, I should have said east coast, not just south.
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