Lampyridology (FIREFLIES) aka Sparklebuttology Updated Encore with Sara Lewis

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We have to say that.

Oh, hey, it's that key under the mat that somehow nobody finds and uses to steal all of your stuff.

Allie Ward.

And this episode, it first aired in 2021, but it's summer and there has been a lot of discourse on fireflies lately.

And this week, July 5th and 6th, marks World Firefly Day.

So I reached out to this guest because I wanted to re-air this with some updates.

And she said, I feel like we've accomplished a ton of firefly conservation in the past four years.

And so we've cited some of the new studies and research and ways to volunteer with this creature because let's roll the episode.

We have fireflies for you or do we have lightning bugs?

We're going to get into it.

So these glowing friends, they're neither flies nor true bugs, rather, beetles in the family Lamparadae.

But as you will soon learn, this episode's name comes comes at an expert's behest.

So she is a professor of biology at Tufts University in Boston.

She did a TED talk on these beloved little critters.

She's the author of the information-packed and entertaining book, Silent Sparks, the wondrous world of fireflies.

You may know her on Twitter under the handle Silent Sparks.

And I was introduced to her through Eric Eaton, who was our WASP champion a few episodes back.

And I jumped at the chance to talk to her, crammed it in the schedule a day or two before my wedding earlier this month.

and we will get to know her work in just a sec.

But super quick.

Thank you to everyone at patreon.com/slash ologies for making this show possible, for the four years we've been around and for submitting great questions every week.

Thank you to everyone keeping ologies up in the charts by leaving us reviews.

And each week I read a just left one and it's 2025 now.

So thank you to SVGD Makes, who wrote, I love ologies.

It's one of the few podcasts I share with people time and time again.

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And thank you to everyone whose reviews I creepily read, literally all of them.

Okay, onward.

Sparkle buttology.

You're going to learn the etymology in a minute.

I'm not even going to go there in the intro, but you will also get hip to how these animals light up, why they light up our hearts, their luminous, sexy language, the best Firefly photography accounts to follow, how to take your own pictures, do's and don'ts of Firefly observation.

Is it actually okay to put them in jars on your nightstands, or are you a monster?

Cobalt ghosts, pink glowworms, femme fatales of the firefly world, how their populations are doing, if artificial lights affect them, how to join conservation efforts, and why Western states need not suffer from sparkle butt envy any longer.

With firefly scientist, evolutionary ecologist, researcher, conservation advocate, professor, author, and perhaps the world's first and only self-proclaimed sparkle buttologist, Dr.

Sarah Lewis.

My name is Sarah Lewis, and I use she, her.

Let us dive.

Okay, great.

Dr.

Lewis, thank you so much for joining.

Urology, is it lampyrology?

Would that be what it is?

You know, this is really, really a hard decision.

I spent a lot of time in the last day thinking about this.

And so, I don't know, I don't like lampural.

I don't like that one at all.

What about lightning bugology?

Or I don't know, like sparkle buttology?

There's so many really great ones.

You know, why use the family scientific name?

It just doesn't seem right.

Sparkle buttology, it is.

Okay, I like that one too.

Good.

We're agreed.

You are one of the world's most well-known Firefly experts and scientists and enthusiasts.

And can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with bugs in general?

Have you always been pro-bug?

So, um,

yeah, you know, no, I haven't.

In fact, I don't like every single insect.

I

am

completely, completely in love with fireflies.

And I think that most people are.

You know, I know a lot of people who don't really like insects.

In fact, they have kind of, you know, entomophobia.

So, well, we don't like bugs.

Honey, they don't like bugs.

But I've really never met a single person who didn't like fireflies.

So they're, you know, they're kind of unique in that way, right?

Like even insect haters love fireflies.

Of course, many people don't realize that fireflies are insects, so, huh?

Yeah, what do you think they think they are?

Fairies?

Magical fairies.

Yeah, absolutely.

I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to sort of educate and advocate for fireflies on social media.

And so one of the things I've noticed on Twitter is that there's a lot of people who don't actually think that fireflies exist.

They think they're like something that's in children's stories.

It's kind of like a myth.

And yeah, there really aren't any fireflies as far as they're concerned.

They just don't believe it.

I mean, I felt that way about huckleberries, and then I found out they were a real food.

And I was like, a huckleberry exists?

So fireflies, I guess that's the first flim flam flam to debunk is that fireflies are non-existent, but they're not fiction.

They're real.

Yeah, there's so many really cool myths to debunk about fireflies.

I just love it.

You know, it's like so much fun, right?

What other myths do you feel like people come at you to ask about?

Okay, so first, they are real.

That's cool.

And

yeah, the other thing is that a lot of people think, you know, you've seen one firefly, you've seen them all.

But

there's actually a lot of different kinds of fireflies.

And so,

yeah, there's a tremendous diversity in terms of their behavior and their lifestyles and the kinds of things that they like to do, the kinds of things they like to eat.

And so, that's really cool.

Like, there's not just one kind of firefly.

If you believe that fireflies are real, you might think there's just one, but there's actually about, well, more than 2,000 different species of firefly.

And it turns out we're discovering new ones all the time.

Oh, Ooh, that's cool.

How big and how small do they get?

Hmm.

So they can be pretty tiny.

Like you can still see them with your naked eye.

So not that tiny.

And they can also get really big.

A couple of years ago, I was in Malaysia and I had a chance to see these.

They're kind of giant, flightless female fireflies.

They're like, the females are like the size of your thumb.

Oh, a big thumb, right?

So they're really, really, and they don't have any wings.

They actually, they kind of look wormish.

And they are, they're pale, and they're big, and they're full of eggs, and they crawl around on the ground.

And the genus is Lampogera, and they're actually really cool because the males look like regular little fireflies.

But the females are giant, much, much bigger than the males.

And they are like putting all of their energy into reproduction.

They don't bother flying around, like, you know, why bother?

I'll just stay there.

here, let the males come to me.

So some of these lady lightning bugs endemic to Asia would fill up your whole palm had you the chance to hold one.

They are wingless, dense, pregnant, with a butt that blinks like a flickering neon sign, kind of like the sexy job of the hut of fireflies with a real flashy ass.

Now, much different than the airborne field fairies that folks in North America might be used to.

When did you first encounter them?

Because I grew up in California, so I didn't see one until I was out of college when I went to New Jersey one summer.

But when did you first encounter fireflies?

Yeah, you know, it's funny.

A lot of people have these like origin stories of like first seeing fireflies when they were kids and they just fell in love and they've been in love with fireflies ever since.

It's like a childhood nostalgia thing for many people.

I grew up in Connecticut, but I don't remember seeing fireflies until I was actually in school in North Carolina.

And I was a marine biologist.

And I was waiting to go to the field in Belize where I was studying coral reef ecology.

And I was sitting out on my back porch with my dog.

And it was like late afternoon, and a thunderstorm was rolling in.

And so suddenly it like got darker and darker and darker.

And just before it started to rain, I noticed that all around us in the grass, there were these lights that were coming out of the grass and slowly rising up and they were like these silent sparks like embers coming out of the grass and just filling the air all around me and it was like whoa what is going on here that is the first time honestly i remember seeing fireflies it was like huh this is amazing When did you sort of turn your sail from the marine studies back to land?

Yeah, well, you know, it's been a kind of evolution of interests.

And one of the great things about being in academia is that you have, like, you can kind of follow your curiosity.

And that night, actually, my curiosity got sparked.

And I started to wonder, like, what the heck is going on here?

Like, who is flying?

What are they flashing about?

Who are they talking to?

What are they saying?

And so in my copious free time, I got to sort of investigate some of those questions and reach out to the to the firefly experts that I could find in the U.S.

and elsewhere and to start to put together, like, what do we know about fireflies?

And what are the big sort of missing pieces?

What don't we know?

And where can I like contribute to trying to answer some of these questions?

And so, after I got my PhD, Dr.

Lewis got her PhD in coral reef ecology in 1984 from Duke University.

In North Carolina, I moved to Massachusetts and started working on fireflies.

And I don't want to say that I've worked continuously on fireflies, but a lot of the work that my students and I have done has been

looking at the kind of intimate details of firefly sex lives

and courtship.

And it's been really fascinating.

We've been able to like discover all this, you know, really, really cool stuff.

Would you say that's primarily why they're flashing their Morse code?

Is that pretty much booty calls, like in a literal sense?

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

It is.

And yeah, so it's subtle.

And there are, you know, there's all kinds of innuendo in there.

And if you're just looking at it from the gross point of view, it's like, yeah, they're just kind of flashing back and forth and trying to find mates.

But really, they're actually trying to find like the best mates.

And the females are really choosy and the males are really competitive and they're doing all this stuff.

All of this information is being passed in this beautiful visual channel that people can actually see.

So, you know, a lot of insects communicate on other kinds of channels like, you know, smell or sound or ultrasound, different kinds of things that are a little bit harder to eavesdrop on.

But fireflies are a beautiful thing because all of this courtship exchange is going on in visual signals that are really really easy for human beings to see to record using electronic devices and also to play back and so one of the things that my students and I have been able to do is to to eavesdrop on the courtship conversations of these different kinds of fireflies and then to be able to play back just to tweak the signals that males are giving a little bit, make them a little bit faster, make them a little bit longer, make them a little bit slower, and then play them back to female fireflies.

And one of the great things about this isn't true for all fireflies, but a whole lot of the fireflies in the U.S.

engage in a, we call it a courtship dialogue, so they talk back and forth.

So the males are flying around, they're advertising their availability with this pretty stereotyped signal.

And the females respond to these male signals if they like the male.

If they don't like the male, they shut up.

She goes studio.

They don't say anything at all.

And so you can actually find out what a Firefly female is thinking about a signal by just asking her.

And so it's kind of like conducting an opinion poll, right?

You say, or, you know, going to the eye doctor, you know, they put those lens things on you and they say, you know, is this better or is this better?

She on this, is this better or is this better?

And you can do that to a female Firefly and she will tell you, yeah, this is the signal that I like.

wow are you doing that with little like led lights yes really exactly yeah so that's been kind of fun and one of the things that we discovered is that female fireflies are really kind of choosy about who they respond to if the female doesn't respond of course the male can't see her it's dark and so he won't be able to find her and mate But if she does respond, there's like a whole frenzy.

You know, she responds to one male.

a whole bunch of males might see her.

It gets to be like this very, very exciting, competitive dating scene.

So, yeah, I guess a lot of my adult life has been spent following fireflies around at night and watching their courtship and mating.

It's a little strange.

What kinds of questions and answers are they looking for?

Are they looking for who has the shortest pulses or the longest light, or is it species-specific?

Yeah, it differs with different species, but in general, it seems to be the females are looking for males that are a little bit more conspicuous within the parameters of their species-specific flash code, right?

A little bit more conspicuous than other males.

So in some of the species where the males are giving like a single bleep, bleep, bleep, females will be looking for slightly longer bleeps.

Not necessarily something that you could see with your eye or that you're with your brain with a human brain, but the brain of a female firefly can make those distinctions and they choose to respond to males that have slightly longer durations of those single flashes.

And one of the things that we weren't actually looking for this, but one of the things that we discovered was that one of the reasons that female fireflies are so choosy is that males are giving females

a present to the females.

It's called a nuptial gift.

And totally, that's really the scientific term for it.

It's like one of the best non-jargon scientific terms.

Like everybody understands a nuptial gift.

Yeah, that's what it is.

So

during mating,

male fireflies are giving females not just their gametes, right?

Not just their sperm, but also this package.

And it's a really beautiful thing.

It's like this very elaborate structure.

If you happen to look inside a male firefly, which, you know, probably most people never have a chance to do, but it's incredible what's inside.

They don't really have a digestive tract or any of the other like, you know, liver, spleen, stomach, all that stuff that we think of as internal organs.

Their internal organs are basically...

reproductive glands that manufacture this elaborate package that is full of nutrients and they transfer that internally to the female while they're mating.

And the males that have the more desirable flashes also turn out, in many cases, to have the larger nuptial gifts.

And the nuptial gifts are a big deal for the females because

they are full of protein, among other things, that the female then can use to provision her eggs.

And so females that get more nuptial gifts actually are able to lay more eggs.

So that's a cool thing.

I mean, why not choose?

Yeah.

I mean, if you kind of know through advertising, like, okay, longer pulse, bigger gift, then there you go.

Like bigger sandwich he's going to bring me.

Absolutely.

We call it Firefly Bling.

Just a side note, right before recording this a few weeks ago, I was cranky as hell and I could not figure out why.

And then I realized that we had run out of coffee that morning.

And so Jared, then simply my fiancé, ran out to get my favorite latte as kind of a pre-nuptial gift, one might say.

And my tiny brain was indeed impressed.

And I was very grateful to have those nutrients.

And I feel like it's important to note that he did not deliver this latte internally or during a copulatory act because I'm not, I don't have that big a coffee problem.

And what about you?

Are you a night person?

How much of your work involves these really long nights?

Yeah, it's crazy.

You know,

I don't know what people who live in the tropics where firefly season is all year round, I don't know how they survive.

Because, you know, in the temperate zone, you have a kind of a short firefly season.

It might go from, I don't know, like May until September or maybe just June, July, August.

And during the firefly season, my students and I basically, we work day and night.

We get so strung out, it's ridiculous.

We can't even think straight.

People hate us.

Our partners like leave us.

Our dog, you know, walks out.

It's really bad.

You can do it for a few years and then you have to take a break.

But you know, we're usually out in the field at night.

And then we are often doing lab experiments with fireflies that we've collected from the field and then put on a reverse like light cycle so that they think it's nighttime when it's actually daytime.

And so during the day, we work in a dark room on fireflies that think it's night.

So you can get kind of strung out on that for after a while.

But, you know, it's all worth it.

Yeah, it's fabulous to be able to bring some of the, you know, magic of these creatures to light and to let people know, you know, that they're real.

And they're really, really kind of amazing.

They're real and they're spectacular.

And you mentioned the tropics and the temperate zones.

Does that mean that they don't inhabit like arid climates as much?

Why don't we have them in California?

Yeah.

So another myth that I am

actually really glad to, well, happy to be able to debunk is that a lot of people think that there aren't any fireflies in the western United States.

And that's not true.

So happy, you should be happy.

They should be happy because there are,

so there's at least three different kinds of fireflies.

There's the daytime fireflies.

They fly during the daytime.

The adults don't light up, even though the larvae do.

They're still in the same firefly family.

There's lots of those in California and in the West.

There are also glowworm fireflies where the females typically,

well, the females glow.

Typically, they are worm-like, as in they don't fly.

And there's really, really cool glowworm fireflies on the west coast including you sh you got to google this the california pink glowworm oh my god they're so beautiful they are really beautiful and they're all over california and i don't know why people don't recognize those as fireflies the males don't light up but the females do they glow for hours to attract these flying unlit males and they're really really cool Okay, hold the phone.

Boy, howdy hot damn.

What?

Okay, so I'm a lifelong Californian, absolute sniveling simp for bugs, and yet this is the first I'm hearing ever of the pink glowworm, alias the firefly beetle, Microfotus angustus.

Now, the ladies stay kind of baby-like in a larva-ish form, and they just cruise the leaf litter, kind of like salmon-colored, segmented, tiny hot dogs.

And then their soulmates are dude beetles who fly around, not glowing, but just looking out for butts.

Now, I have spent my life jealous of new jersey and ignoring all of these horny baby-like sparkle butts under my california nose but as long as we're getting regional i covered this ages ago in a mini sode you probably never heard but do you call them you personally do you call them fireflies or lightning bugs take a moment vote aloud while you're layering up a lasagna or welding something or brushing a chinchilla lightning bugs lightning bugs okay i hope one of you said Peeny Wallies, because a University of Cambridge linguistics professor by the name of Bert Vo also needed to know Firefly or Lightning Bug?

So he asked 10,000 Americans what they call sparkle butts.

40% of you go either way, Firefly, Lightning Bug, you don't care.

30% of us are exclusively Team Firefly.

Hello, West Coast.

Hi, Massachusetts.

And about another 30% say, yeah, no, it's lightning bug.

The South, greetings to you.

But to my delight and probably Professor Vo's befuddlement, 0.02% of those people he polled call these glowing summer cuties peeny wallies.

So that's two people in a study of 10,000.

And if they are not already friends, oh, I hope they find each other.

I want them to hold hands and just stare into the summer dusk.

So my point is, we need not be a nation divided on the topic of peeny wallies, especially now, because.

And the other exciting news, and this is something that we're really just actually, this is really, really recent, that we have begun to realize that there are flashing fireflies in the western United States.

So there's actually, there's a Western firefly project that's run out of the Natural History Museum of Utah, and they've been mapping flashing fireflies in Utah, Nevada,

nearby states for

since 2014.

There's a new project called the New Mexico Firefly Project.

There's flashing fireflies in New Mexico, in Colorado.

I heard a rumor there might be flashing fireflies in Oregon.

So

a lot of this is very, very recent, and a lot of it is based on citizen science, like community science observations, just people going out into the night looking for fireflies in different places where there are certain characteristics

like moisture, like darkness,

and food for the firefly larvae.

So, yeah, it's really exciting.

There are Western fireflies.

That's a myth that it just gives me great pleasure to be able to say, no, not true.

You do have them, and they're really, really beautiful.

So, yeah.

So, if you've been asking fireflies, where have you been all my life?

The answer is perhaps closer than you thought, right here, literally with a flashing butt.

You just didn't notice.

But where have we been all of their lives how long do they spend in the inky evenings what's up with their life cycle yes so one of the things that people who believe that fireflies are real and maybe have even seen fireflies

Many people don't realize that what we're looking at when we see these ethereal adults flying around in the night, we're just looking at the very, very tip of the firefly life cycle.

Like that, it's the tip of the iceberg fireflies spend up to two years living their lives in a completely different environment so fireflies are beetles and like other beetles they go through complete metamorphosis so the adult firefly the female lays her eggs the eggs hatch out into little tiny firefly larvae.

So there are a few thousand species of fireflies and as adults, they're between five and twenty-five millimeters long, just an inch long at the biggest.

But in their larval forms, they're little and they're hungry.

And it's the larval stage where they are, they're eating, and they're actually

predators.

They're voracious predators.

They're really kind of fearsome voracious predators because they live underground and sometimes in rotting wood, sometimes in leaf litter, and they're burrowing around and they're looking for soft-bodied things like earthworms, slugs, snails, and that's what they eat.

And even though they're tiny, they have the ability to bite and paralyze prey that's many, many, many times bigger than themselves.

So a couple of firefly larvae can take down a really big earthworm, paralyze it so that it basically can't move.

It's still alive.

Can't move, still alive, can't move.

And then they will, yeah, they'll just feast on that earthworm for days and days and days and days.

Do they hunt in packs?

Are they hunting in packs like wolves?

Yeah.

You know, we don't actually know what they do in the field, but there are many observations of, and I've seen it myself, in the lab.

Firefly larvae will gather together in groups to take down an earthworm.

And you see see them, oh man, it's just kind of gory.

Like I've walked into at night, like you're just walking by and you have this little container where you have firefly larvae, right?

Everybody has this in their house.

Oh, the delight it brought me to think of a firefly expert tossing their mail onto a kitchen counter next to a deli cup of thriving larvae.

Sarah just has these things in her casual possession, of course.

Man, if I had a container of firefly larvae for every container of firefly larvae I had in my house, oh, And a couple of earthworms.

And you see that there's all this glowing, and they're all lined up along the earthworm.

And all the firefly larvae are glowing.

And they're all, they just have their jaws sunk into the earthworm.

And the earthworm isn't moving at all.

And they're lined up like, you know, kind of like suckling pigs.

They're just like all lined up sucking earthworm.

like an earthworm smoothie.

It's a little alarming and slightly disgusting.

But anyways,

that's the backstory of those ethereal adults: is that they are larvae for up to two years, depending on the latitude.

And during that time,

they're just eating and growing, eating and growing, eating and growing.

And then when they get big enough, they pupate, you know, kind of like a butterfly.

They metamorphose into an adult.

The adult fireflies only live a couple of weeks, so very, very short-lived.

And all they're doing is reproducing.

Most adult fireflies don't eat anything at all

once they reach that stage.

And so they're spending down the capital that they have accumulated, all the resources that they've managed to accumulate as larvae, is getting spent down in all of their reproductive activity.

They're flying around, they're nuptial gifts.

So the nuptial gifts are kind of a big thing in the firefly economics, right?

Because they're expensive for males to produce.

They're spending down their capital with every nuptial gift that they're making.

And they're really valuable for females because she doesn't have any other income.

It's just the nuptial gift.

So

Wow.

Just revisit this drama with me, if you will.

Come on this journey.

So let's say you're a baby.

You're a human baby, a small, chubby baby who must grow.

So you post up with other babies around a giant paralyzed worm, like a beached whale.

And you and all these babies just devour this whale-like carcass until it's gone.

And you do this for years.

Imagine if humans spent most of our lifespans in focused bloodlust, eating raw meat.

And then in the very twilight of life, like when we're 80, we finally go through puberty.

And for the equivalent of like the last year of our human lives, out comes a different looking person with a glowing disco ass that makes people so horny and the world loves us.

We're so beautiful, people assume we're not even real.

And then all that flesh we ate all of our lives as babies, we use that fuel to pay baby mamas so that kids we'll never meet can survive and follow in our sparkly footsteps.

I mean, firefly life cycles.

What a party.

Do scientists know why they glow certain colors and where is that bioluminescence coming from?

I'm sure your background as a marine biologist.

A lot of glowing stuff in the sea where it's dark, but not a lot of glowing stuff up here, so it seems.

So what's it made out of?

A lot of creatures have independently evolved this amazing, fantastic ability to

produce their own light.

It's really fabulous.

So

among terrestrial animals and plants there's not that many that can produce lights even though produce their own light even though it's really common in the sea.

In the sea a lot of marine creatures use their light for as a defense or as a way of hiding, camouflage, or as a way to attract prey.

And

fireflies use their light in many of the same ways.

So every single juvenile firefly, those baby fireflies I was talking about that live underground or in leaf litter, they actually, every single juvenile firefly can light up even when the adults can't.

And so we think that the ability, this light-producing talent of fireflies first evolved in the juvenile stage and that it first evolved as a warning signal.

So firefly larvae and a lot of adult fireflies taste really nasty.

They manufacture toxins that they carry inside their body that are distasteful to many insect-eating predators.

And so,

you know, if you live in the dark and there's no reflected light, it doesn't really help to be like brightly colored like a monarch butterfly.

Or say brightly colored poison dart frogs or skunk stripes.

So this, yo, yo, you do not want this type of coloration, has a name and it's aposemitism, taken from the Greek words for away sign.

And aposemitism was coined in 1890 by a British zoologist who had a mustache like a snow-white feather boa, Sir Edward Bagnailed Poulton, in 1890.

Because one of the pleasures of being an animal scientist is that you can make up words when you identify the need for them, like sparkle buttology.

All of those usual warning colors don't really work.

But if you can make a flash of light, that turns out to be a very, very memorable kind of warning signal that flashes out in the darkness.

You know, I am toxic.

Do not even think about eating me.

And so it was, so the first fireflies.

By reconstructing their evolutionary history, we have figured out, scientists have figured out, that

the very first fireflies, the adults didn't light up at all and it wasn't until many million years later that adult some adult fireflies managed to co-opt that larval bioluminescence and turn it into the quick bright flashes that the flashing fireflies now use to find their mates so

fireflies started out warning signal and then later on turned it to courtship.

It's kind of romantic, right?

Imagine a dating app.

It's like, oh my God, you're toxic.

I'm toxic.

And then you just can't stop sending texts with your butts.

That's the firefly life.

And so this week for this encore, Dr.

Lewis would like to keep these lovers alive and ask that her donation go to fireflyersinternational.net, which, as the name suggests, it's a global effort to catalyze the conservation of fireflies and their habitats.

They do it through research to identify and prioritize the species that are facing extinction.

They design and translate and distribute fact sheets on firefly diversity.

They identify threats and they support advocacy, such as, for example, raising awareness during events like World Firefly Day, which is this week.

It's July 5th and 6th.

So celebrate a Firefly.

Share this episode with people.

Post about it.

Do some community science.

Fireflies need you.

So that is fireflyersinternational.net.

And that is linked in the show notes.

And that donation we made in her name was possible by some word-approved sponsors of the show who you may hear about now.

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Okay, you were in the dark with some firefly facts, and Sarah had illuminating answers.

Let's hear them.

I have so many questions from listeners.

Megan Walker wants to know: if you clap or make noise, do they flash?

My dad told me that as a kid, and it mostly seems to work, but I'm also skeptical that it's just coincidence.

Yeah, so fireflies respond to

a threat

by often respond to a threat by making light because it is a warning signal.

And so if you have a firefly and it's,

you know, just kind of hanging out in this container and you vibrate that container or knock on it or, you know, slap the side of the container, a firefly will often flash.

And so it's possible that clapping might be perceived as a disturbance and they would they would light up as a way of saying, hey, don't eat me.

I'm here.

You know, I'm toxic.

Can you not do that?

Got it.

Okay.

So many people wanted to know about catching them.

And if you catch them and put them in a jar with grass, how bad is it for them?

And will they die immediately?

No, I think it's actually, you know, I love that people catch fireflies and then release them.

I think it's a really, it's a beautiful thing.

I think the more people that can appreciate these miraculous, luminous beings, the better.

And what better way to do it than to like get up close and personal with them?

So, yeah, I think that as long as people realize that, you know, if you catch a firefly, handle it really, catch it with a net,

handle it really gently, coax it into a jar with some, as you say, with grass, maybe a little bit of damp, not like sopping wet, but damp paper towel, even a little tiny piece of apple.

They'll really, really like the moisture from the apple and the sugars that are in the apple.

And, you know, watch them overnight.

Make sure they have a lot of moisture in the jar, and then let them go into the same habitat where you collected them the next day.

The only,

so I'm all in favor of catch and release for fireflies.

There's one caution that I have to mention, which is that this happened to my nephew many years ago.

He was visiting from California.

He was visiting in Vermont, and he was really excited to see fireflies.

And he went out and he caught a whole bunch and he put them in a jar and he put them on the night table next to his bed.

And during the night, he woke up and he actually saw a very, very gory scene, which is pretty common.

Some of the fireflies were eating some of the other fireflies.

So

I haven't really mentioned this, but there's a particular group of fireflies just in North America.

Yeah, we're proud.

And they are predators of other fireflies.

And what was going on in Nate's jar was that he had accidentally caught some of the prey fireflies and a couple of the predator fireflies.

And the predator fireflies were like so excited and they were feasting on the other fireflies.

And

he was like, he screamed in the middle of the night.

We had to get up and go running into his room.

He was fine.

The fireflies were not.

And then we had to explain like the whole, you know, predation thing.

And yeah.

So be careful to only include the little guys and none of the big predatory ones.

Oh, no.

So yes, photurus.

These predatory females, whom Sarah has called the femme fatale of lightning bugs, are great at doing impressions of other species, but they're not great at making their own lusabufigens.

Lusabufigens?

Sure, which are steroid compounds that make them less tasty to birds and spiders and such.

So catfishing and preying on other glowing beetles gives them more defense against predators.

So for those who wish that there were raves that were also gladiatorial matches, congratulations, Sickos.

Your time has arrived.

Davis Bourne, Annie Hardkey, Kevin Glover, Lisa Ma want to know why do they smell that way?

Do they smell that?

Oh, yes, that's so interesting.

What great questions.

Thank you all.

So, when you handle fireflies, they do give off a particular odor, and that odor is part of their sort of, we call it it a multimodal defense mechanism, but it's they have the light that they're using as a warning.

They have a kind of smell, a volatile smell that they release that warns potential predators that they are going to taste bad.

And then if you were to taste a firefly, which I don't recommend, you would

or even like, you know, gently bite into a firefly, which I don't recommend.

Fireflies release a tiny droplet of blood, and the blood that circulates inside their bodies contains a toxin that is very, very deadly to many vertebrate predators.

So yeah, that smell is something that a lot of people don't even notice it, but it's really, really noticeable.

If you hold a firefly in your hand, just hold it up to your nose.

They get disturbed if you're capturing them, and then they have that particular odor.

And yeah, that's cool.

It's part of their defense against getting eaten.

Side note, I have never sniffed a peanut wally, but the internet told me that they smell like the following adjectives.

Musky, cucumber-esque, and buggy.

Oh, yes, buggy.

It's very helpful.

Either way, the taste and those aforementioned lusobufigen steroids can make a frog or a bird think twice and maybe barf it right up.

Although plenty of folks report seeing fireflies illuminating the stomachs of their predators, which is kind of like being eaten by an alligator, yet continuing to swipe on tinder from its murky, disgusting belly.

But yes, that sparkle buttology smell is the sweet odor of love and warnings.

Aha!

So sniff a firefly.

Sniff a firefly today

or tomorrow or tonight.

Yeah.

Nutella wants to know, why do fireflies like overgrown grass more than cut grass?

And what can people with yards do to encourage more fireflies?

Absolutely.

So one of the things about fireflies is that

they need the same kinds of things that all of us need, right?

So they need food, they need shelter, they need moisture and so

if you can provide those things, you can usually encourage fireflies if they're around in your area to move into your yard.

And so one really important thing for all of the stages of all the life stages of the firefly is moisture.

And so, longer grass holds moisture better.

It holds moisture in the soil better, and it will be more conducive for females to lay their eggs at the base of the grass and for the larvae to develop in that habitat.

It's also better for longer grass is better for all the soil organisms like the earthworms and all those things that the baby fireflies are eating as prey.

I guess the biggest thing if you want to promote fireflies

in your yard is to leave your grass long or better yet, make it into a wildflower meadow.

Plants, fireflies also need darkness.

So a lot of the work that we are currently doing at my lab at Tufts focuses on light pollution and how light pollution impacts fireflies.

And it turns out that lights, even pretty dim lights, can really, really disrupt the courtship dialogue of fireflies.

And so if you have like layers of shrubs and trees, if you happen to have street lights around or other lights that are shiny into your yard, having a lot of layers of vegetation will help make dark places where the fireflies can court.

So you're not letting your lawn go to shit.

You're making a romantic environment where sparklebug beetles can get nasty.

So what else do you need to do to set the mood and help them thrive?

So fireflies need dark lights.

They need moisture.

And they also, fireflies are insects.

And so you definitely do not want to be treating your yard or your garden with any kind of broad-spectrum insecticides because anything that you remember the baby fireflies spend months to years living underground.

So if you're treating your yard or if you happen to have a lawn and you're treating it for Japanese beetle grubs, you're going to be killing the firefly larvae that live in the lawn too.

So

be really, really thoughtful about using insecticides only where and when you need them.

Try to target them to specific pests.

And then also, in addition to sort of

shading your yard, if you have a place where there's fireflies and

you can control the light in that firefly habitat.

Just turn your lights off during the firefly mating season, give them a little privacy, you know, let them do their thing, and then you know, in the wintertime, you can have your lights back on again as much as you want.

But if you can shield your lights, or dim them, or put them on timers so that they're off during the firefly mating season, that would be really that's a great way to attract fireflies to your yard.

Great.

Alexis Cully, first time question asker, wants to know if any fireflies flash different colors.

Yeah, so there are slightly different colors.

And

so there are tiny, tiny differences in the shape of the enzyme, Luciferase, that produces, that's inside the firefly lantern and that is one of the players that produces the, actually it's the catalyst for the bioluminescence.

And so tiny differences in the shape of that enzyme actually create different colors.

And so in North America, America, we have fireflies that range from yellow.

So a lot of the fireflies that are flashing in the early evening have sort of a lime green or yellow color bioluminescence.

There's other groups of fireflies that have a more amber colored bioluminescence.

And then there's some late night fireflies that flash with a very green bioluminescence.

And so they do have different colors.

Oh, okay.

Do any change their colors like an LED light at all?

Ooh, that would be cool.

Not yet, but I think they're working on it.

We're looking at for mutations right now.

Oh, amazing.

So many great questions.

Casey Hanmer wrote in and said, I think Luciferase is an amazing name for a child, but my wife says, no, what the fuck?

Help me out.

Absolutely.

Yes, Luciferase.

I love it.

Yeah.

You know.

Hey, Ace.

Yes, it's great.

That is great.

And it means light, right?

Lucifera means light, right?

Great.

Luciferase means light bearer.

It's a beautiful name for a kid.

Also, how Satan biblically became Lucifer may have just been the result of a translation, Snafu, involving the Hebrew word for howl.

So Casey, Christine, name that next kid Luciferase.

You have our blessing.

And patron Nathan Algrim wrote in to say that they saw their first blue ghosts this summer, and it was, quote, trippy in the best way possible.

and I'm glad for Nathan that this experience wasn't trippy in the worst way possible which would have been an encounter with hallucifer himself but yes you were not alone when it came to wondering about blue ghost fireflies and why they are such low-flying marvels oh and uh milakuta wants to know what's the deal with blue ghost fireflies

the deal with blue ghost fireflies they are magic totally magic so this is a firefly that's found throughout the southeastern United States in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

And they're really, really cool because they're a glowworm firefly.

The females are tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny.

They don't have any wings.

They cannot fly.

They are totally earthbound, which is sad, but they're also really beautiful.

They're like these beautiful little jewels that are hidden in the forest, in the leaf litter in the forest.

The males light up in this case, and they fly around with a very, very long, like minutes long glow.

And

for reasons that remain a bit elusive but have something to do with sort of the physics of light, their light looks blue.

But if you record the light with a spectro,

like a spectrograph, it actually turns out to be green.

Oh.

So they're called blue ghosts because they look kind of bluish when it's reflected off the vegetation.

and

so

but they're really glowing green and one of the things about the blue ghost fireflies that's quite remarkable is that they've gotten to be a pretty big tourist attraction in the past few years and fireflies in many places are actually kind of flickering out in most cases it's because their habitat is being lost in some cases it's because their local population is being threatened by either light pollution or even tourism.

And so the blue ghost fireflies are particularly susceptible to too much attention from tourists.

When the season begins, the females are down in the leaf litter and on the forest floor.

And so if there's a lot of people who are walking through their habitat, they actually don't, they're often looking at the males that are flying around and not really realizing that they could be accidentally trampling these tiny females and also the larvae and also the eggs and also the pupae.

And it's the females that are carrying like the next generation of fireflies.

So when people are going to see blue ghost fireflies, I do highly recommend going to see them, but stay on the trail.

Don't walk off into the forest because you might be trampling on those beautiful little females.

Yeah, and then, which is probably the last thing people want to be doing without realizing that they're doing it.

So, yeah, yeah, you wouldn't.

How would you ever know?

Yeah.

patrons: Allie Gibson, first-time question asker, Ivaly Sanchez, Chris Moore, Allie Barg, Rose Moon Yards, Kent Durvin, and so many people, Claire Weldon, Tegan Mortimer, first-time question asker Anthony, Katie Cortwright, Alex Stahl have said,

wanted to know about the numbers of fireflies.

Anthony says, why is it some years we have tons and tons, and other years almost none?

And Claire says, I've heard a lot the last few years about major declines in firefly populations.

Alex Dahl says, growing up, I remember seeing fireflies all the time, but it's been ages since I saw any.

How are they doing, and what can we do to help?

Great questions.

Yes, thank you.

So, you know, like other insects, fireflies have good years and bad years.

And so in a really, really dry year,

there's a lot of mortality, especially of the larvae.

And so there won't be as many fireflies, the adult fireflies emerging the following spring and summer.

And sometimes in a wet year, you know, there's lots of prey, they're doing really, the larvae are surviving really well.

There'll be a lot of fireflies that year.

And so they do have good years and bad years.

But

in general,

it's a really, really common perception.

And it's something that a lot of firefly experts and people on the street have noticed that there just aren't as many fireflies as there used to be.

And this holds across the board, around the world.

It's not just, you know, something that happens in the United States.

And so

there are three major things that are responsible for declining firefly populations.

The first one is the loss of suitable habitat.

So some fireflies

are really, really...

tuned into a very particular habitat, like one particular kind of wetland.

And that's the only place that they can survive.

That's where their larvae live.

That's

where they can pupate, where they can complete their whole life cycle.

If you wipe out that wetland, those fireflies can't just get up and move somewhere else.

There are other fireflies that are like habitat generalists.

They can live in all kinds of places.

They're doing fine.

The habitat specialists are not doing so well.

So yes, some sparkle butts do well sauntering between various habitats, but other tender, glowy babies have evolved to thrive in only one specific ecological niche.

So the loss of and the degradation of appropriate habitat is a really, really big problem for many species of firefly, including a bunch of U.S.

fireflies that are specialists in wetland habitats.

The second thing that is really bad for fireflies, we've already talked about a little bit, they need dark nights.

And so, light pollution is a big threat to fireflies

around the world.

And

so, you can turn off your lights,

that's an easy thing to do.

Light pollution is totally reversible.

Just turn that switch.

And then insecticides is

a third major threat to fireflies.

So pesticides that are applied to

the soil or to

plants that then get into the soil and will kill firefly larvae.

So I guess, you know, one of the things that we've been doing, so I work with the group called Fireflyers International.

And one of the things that we have been doing is trying to educate people about the different life stages of fireflies, the things that they need,

and

to advocate for their protection.

We've been working with the Xerse Society in the U.S.

And you can go to the Xerse Society

website, just Google Xerce

fireflies, and there's a whole lot of information, free PDFs that you can download about conserving fireflies and what you can do to and there's actually we have fact sheets about fireflies and light pollution so firefly friendly lighting guidelines and you can get all that stuff at the Xercease website.

Listen, I get it.

You're listening to this while paddling a gondola or herding penguins and you're like, you're my internet dad.

Look it up for me.

So Xerceas recommends using motion detectors or timers to limit the amount of time lights shine, shielding lights so they only illuminate the intended areas like a pathway, switching out bright outdoor lighting for red bulbs or covering existing bulbs with red filters, and closing curtains at night to reduce the amount of indoor lights that spill outdoors.

So, more info is up at xerce.org.

And also, get Dr.

Sarah Lewis's book, Silent Spark, which is linked in the show notes.

It will delight and inform you.

Also, I just realized when I said herding penguins, it sounded like herding penguins, but I meant like there's a herd of penguins that you're, I don't want to make it sound like you're just out there herding penguins.

Anyway, what else can you do?

Are there any community science projects that people can help out with?

Yeah, so there's so much we don't know about fireflies.

So as I mentioned, there's especially a lot we don't know about fireflies in the western U.S.

And so I highly recommend the Western Firefly Project.

Just Google it.

And

they're collecting, right now, collecting observations from

people all over the West of flashing fireflies.

And that's really exciting.

There's a New Mexico firefly project that just started this year.

And that's really exciting.

People are discovering like all new fireflies.

We never even knew that they were in

some of these places.

So there's a lot of really,

it's a very exciting time to be a community scientist for fireflies.

We really, fireflies are out for a short time each night and also a short season each year and so we really need many eyes in many places.

So those are two things, the Western Firefly Project and the New Mexico Firefly Project.

And then also across all of the U.S., there is Firefly Watch, which is run by Massachusetts Audubon Society.

And you can find out more about that community science project on their website.

So 2025, Ali here, and Dr.

Lewis shared in her update that new projects are rolling out in North America and elsewhere where community science can help gather really valuable data on species distributions.

One of those places is fireflyatlas.org.

And that was launched in 2022.

It was right after this episode aired.

And we'll link it on our website.

And fireflyatlas.org, it's a big collaborative effort.

And Sarah tells me that firefly experts and Dr.

Sparklebutts need more information on species distributions and habitat associations and threats so that they can make informed management and conservation decisions.

And fireflyatlas.org has a map of North America.

And if your region is highlighted, you can click on it to learn which firefly species they're searching for and how you can help them.

Now, how are the fireflies doing?

Dr.

Lewis let me know that after this episode initially aired, there was an international effort.

It was published in the 2024 study.

It was titled Illuminating Firefly Diversity, Trends, Threats, and Conservation Strategies.

It was in the journal Insects, and it outlines the main threats linked to the recent population population declines.

And they are habitat loss and degradation, light pollution, pesticide overuse, climate change, and tourism.

And although this big global coordination of conservation has begun only recently, considerable progress has already made, she told me.

So that's a good news.

And Sarah also said that here in the good old USA, we successfully petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to add this critically endangered Bethany beach firefly.

It's a species that lives in a tiny stretch of Delaware to the endangered species list.

And they're working to get legal protection for other at-risk fireflies and their habitats.

So they're working on it.

And firefly scientists have also gathered enough data to do official IUCN red list assessments for around 150 species from all over, from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia.

And Dr.

Lewis added that while this is just a fraction of global firefly diversity, the bad news is that about 20% of species assessed to date face heightened extinction risks.

Now, in terms of spreading the concern and appreciating fireflies, how can you capture them?

Not physically.

Oh, and

what about photography?

Any hints on capturing good firefly photos?

Yes.

So I would like to say that personally, I am in awe of the many, many firefly photographers out there who capture these beautiful long exposure images of fireflies.

And in these images, you can often see the flash pattern of the firefly.

You can almost identify like what species of firefly it is from the photograph.

But

I have no idea how they do that.

It's okay.

I looked up some tips for us.

So basically, get a tripod, slow down the shutter speed, open your lens up wide, and crank up your camera's sensitivity to light, or it's ISO.

And if you don't have a fancy camera that is also not a phone, then there are apps like ProCam 8 that have presets like low light and light trails.

And you can also do a slow shutter mode, which stacks a bunch of images on top of each other to create a longer exposure effect.

But patience and experimentation, maybe a late night energy drink, all help.

Or you know what?

Just leave it to the pros.

Actually, I'll just put a shout out here to one of the firefly photographers we've worked with very closely on our conservation efforts.

He has a website.

It's called Firefly Experience.

His name is Radeem Schreiber, and he takes pictures of fireflies using just their natural light, never any flash, never any extraneous.

light.

And his photographs are really, they're amazing and they really capture the personality of each of the different kinds of fireflies.

So I highly recommend Firefly Experience.

Cool.

Last listener question: Sarah Hoover, Cameron Brown, and R.J.

Deutsch all asked

if you have thoughts on the song Fireflies by Owl City, if it ever gets stuck in your head.

Have you heard of this?

That's so funny.

Yes, I don't really like that song because, you know, I don't know, that 10,000 hug stuff.

Because I get a thousand hugs from 10,000 lightning bugs.

Yeah, it's not my favorite Firefly song.

You know, there's a really cool, um, there's a glowworm song that was popular, I guess, in the 1950s.

My mother used to sing it to me when I was little.

Hey, maybe that's why I study Firefly.

Anyways, Mills Brothers Glowworm Song, I like that one a whole lot better.

Did we just discover why Sarah Lewis is a firefly scientist?

Did that just happen?

I don't know.

I guess either way, sing to your loved ones, ask smart people weird but well-intentioned questions because you never know what's underneath the rocks on the topic of

last questions I always ask everyone.

Your least favorite thing about being a sparkle batologist or least favorite thing about fireflies, is there anything that's just an annoyance or you wish was different absolutely and it's um undoubtedly mosquitoes

so there's a really high correlation between you know fireflies like places where there's a lot of moisture and so do mosquitoes and it's nighttime and so yeah i think the hardest thing for a lot of my students and for myself working on fireflies is just like not necessarily like the mosquitoes are going to bite you because usually you're covered up completely long sleeves sometimes we wear rubber gloves and we have like mosquito gear on, anti-mosquito gear on, but it's the sound of the mosquitoes, that little,

you know, that whine.

And it just like sometimes I would go to sleep finally after a really long night.

And I'd still like in my dreams, I would hear that, that whine of the mosquitoes just like buzzing around my head.

And

yeah, that was really kind of traumatic for a couple of years in there.

And lastly, difficult to answer, but your favorite thing about fireflies or being a firefly scientist.

Wow.

Yeah.

So this is easy because,

you know, the thing that I really, really appreciate, I just feel so fortunate to be able to

like have devoted so much of my scientific career to studying such a wondrous animal.

Like you just like every single season, you know, I do, you know, my science and like write all the notes and take all the measurements and stuff, but every single season, I always spend at least one night that I just dedicate to wonder.

I don't, I just like put everything else out of my mind and I just go out and gawk at the fireflies and just drink in the wonder.

And man, it's a really incredible thing.

And it's not just, you know, that the

they don't just bring that wonder to me, but to everybody who sees them.

So, you know, they are some of the best ambassadors for Earth's natural magic.

And so, man, I feel so lucky to be like, you know, representing them to, to, and telling people about them and learning more about them.

It's just like, I just feel like super, super, super.

grateful to the fireflies, lucky to have found this niche.

Well, they, I think they're lucky to have a spokesperson as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as you, for sure.

You're very kind.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for doing this.

This is just a joy.

I love this.

It's been really, really fun.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

So yes, get Sarah Lewis's book, Silent Spark.

It's linked in the show notes below.

Just a social media update.

Dr.

Lewis, like millions of us, is no longer on X, but she is on threads at Silent Sparks.

And she says that those curious about fireflies could join or follow her on Facebook in a Firefly group there.

So we will link that also on the show notes.

And she also shared that later this summer, fireflyers from all over the planet will be gathering in Mexico to attend the International Firefly Symposium, where they're going to report on new discoveries about firefly ecology and behavior and exchange ideas and methods and share their most effective conservation strategies.

So, uh, to be a firefly on the wall there, you would make so many new friends.

And Dr.

Lewis also said to the Olagies community, thanks again for helping to keep the firefly magic alive.

And we will link Dr.

Lewis's website in the show notes.

And also in the show notes is a link to our website, which will point you toward all the resources, studies, and maps and pictures that we talked about in this episode.

We are at Olagies on Blue Sky and Instagram.

I'm at Allie Ward with one L on both.

Thank you, Aaron Talbert, for administering the Ologies podcast Facebook group and for being my friend for decades.

Thank you, Noelle Dilworth, for schedule schedule producing Olagies.

Susan Hale, managing directs, everything from the tiny stuff to the giant stuff.

Stephen Ray Morris and Jarrett Sleeper of Mind Jam Media were the editors for this episode.

And when it initially came out, I had been married to Jarrett Sleeper for about a week.

So we're now about on our fourth anniversary.

Things are still going great.

And folding in all the updates for this was Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio, who the entire Ology staff threatens to move in with whenever she sends us pictures of all the cool bugs up in her Canadian yard.

Mercedes, please fluff up the couch for me.

We also now have Smology's episodes, which are G-rated and kid safe, and they are in their own podcast feed wherever you get podcasts.

They're great for kids and road trips.

Just look for Smology's.

They're also linked in the show notes.

Ology's merch is at ologiesmerch.com and join our Patreon.

You can find us at patreon.com/slash ologies, where you could submit questions we may ask on the show.

Nick Thorburn did the theme music.

And if you stick around until the end, I tell you a secret.

And this one is a classic.

It haunts me to this day.

I'm glad I got it off my chest.

If you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret.

And this week we did a lot of driving through Montana, which in which gambling is legal in that state.

And whenever I see a casino billboard that advertises loose slots, I always think of just terrible food poisoning, just like eating bad shrimp from the buffet in heaven.

Loose slots all weekend.

Just chained to the jackpot, if you will.

Anyway, it's gross.

I can't remember if I've told you that before, but now you know.

Sorry.

Bye-bye.

Homiology, cryptozoology, litology, nanotechnology, meteorology,

varietology, mamphology, seriology, celerology.

Especially fireflies.

Their butts light up.

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