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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!

  • 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.