the synchronous Firefly ranges
throughout the southern Appalachian it
really is a pretty magical thing to see
I think people are just fascinated by
fireflies you know I especially growing
up a lot of people have experiences of
catching fireflies in jars and looking
at how they’re doing they’re flashing
you know looking at them real close
maybe it reminds them of their youth and
they want to bring their children out to
experience the same thing the
synchronous Firefly can be distinguished
from other species by its pattern of six
flashes about half a second apart it may
look somewhat random at first but when
you get a high density of males flashing
the synchronicity of the dark period is
is very obvious and then a flashing
itself will become synchronous as the
night goes on generally fireflies do
have a similar appearance of some are
larger the predatory ones tend to be a
little bit bigger and there’s a really
small species too called the the bloop
ghost and it’s very small but generally
they’re they’re a type of beetle and so
they’re going to have this hard outer
shell over their wings that they used to
fly with and they usually also have a
little bit of red and yellow markings
right above their head and so you really
do have to look at the flash pattern and
some other morphological characters to
tell the species apart generally the
habitats where we find patinas Carolinas
is in these low-lying moist areas where
there’s kind of a relatively clear
understory so that the fireflies can
visually see each other it also has to
have somewhat of a closed canopy so that
it can be nice and dark they typically
start flashing around 9:30 or 10:00 but
they do wait for it to get fairly dark
there is a couple of theories as to why
they’re synchronous and the female
really does need a large light input in
order for her to respond that’s how she
recognizes the correct species so when
she responds and the male’s then know
that she’s the right female then they
can reproduce there’s lots of other
things that are flashing so they have to
have this sort of Morse code
in order to be able to know they’re with
the right species
throughout the southern Appalachian it
really is a pretty magical thing to see
I think people are just fascinated by
fireflies you know I especially growing
up a lot of people have experiences of
catching fireflies in jars and looking
at how they’re doing they’re flashing
you know looking at them real close
maybe it reminds them of their youth and
they want to bring their children out to
experience the same thing the
synchronous Firefly can be distinguished
from other species by its pattern of six
flashes about half a second apart it may
look somewhat random at first but when
you get a high density of males flashing
the synchronicity of the dark period is
is very obvious and then a flashing
itself will become synchronous as the
night goes on generally fireflies do
have a similar appearance of some are
larger the predatory ones tend to be a
little bit bigger and there’s a really
small species too called the the bloop
ghost and it’s very small but generally
they’re they’re a type of beetle and so
they’re going to have this hard outer
shell over their wings that they used to
fly with and they usually also have a
little bit of red and yellow markings
right above their head and so you really
do have to look at the flash pattern and
some other morphological characters to
tell the species apart generally the
habitats where we find patinas Carolinas
is in these low-lying moist areas where
there’s kind of a relatively clear
understory so that the fireflies can
visually see each other it also has to
have somewhat of a closed canopy so that
it can be nice and dark they typically
start flashing around 9:30 or 10:00 but
they do wait for it to get fairly dark
there is a couple of theories as to why
they’re synchronous and the female
really does need a large light input in
order for her to respond that’s how she
recognizes the correct species so when
she responds and the male’s then know
that she’s the right female then they
can reproduce there’s lots of other
things that are flashing so they have to
have this sort of Morse code
in order to be able to know they’re with
the right species
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