Wednesday, 06 July 2011

• Summer Fireflies Enjoy Nature’s Friday Night at a Single’s Bar

  
  I read about this on CNN's website in the science section and could not resist writing about it. Last night there were so many fireflies in my mom's yard it was akin to fireworks! I was surprised to learn my mom's yard was actually serving as a setting for "speed dating" and it will from now until late August. And according to the CNN article, the "lightning bugs" are enjoying a big showing this year.
  
  Those fireflies that light up your lawn, their tails loaded with "bioluminescent" chemicals, might seem just part of the season's scenery, but something a little more serious is happening.
  
  "It's like Friday night at the singles bar out there," says entomologist Marc Branham of the University of Florida. "A lot of people might think firefly bioluminescence is just nature's fanciful nighttime entertainment but there is a lot more going on there."
  
  In a word, it's about mating. Most of the fireflies, sometimes called glow worms, flitting over your lawn and firing up are males, Branham says, signaling their availability to females fireflies on the ground. "They only flash back when they see a male they find particularly attractive."
  Each species has a signature pattern of glows and flashes and while some look for mates all night, others only try nightly signaling for periods as short as 26 minutes. As a graduate student, Branham built an "artificial male" firefly, a light-emitting diode, designed to mimic male signals of various species by altering the strength, duration and timing of the flash. (For one species, "females really went for a faster flash rate," he says. "In fact, they went for a flash rate faster than was found in nature.")
  
  Once the lightning bug lovers have exchanged flashes, barring a child cramming one of the romantics into a jar (remember those airholes), the male lands nearby and the fireflies mate.
  
  The flashes serve as mating calls, just like bullfrog croaks or bird calls, letting females pick out the most fit mate. Darwin described this sort of "sexual selection" in his 1871 book, The Descent of Men and Selection in Relation to Sex, covering numerous examples of female "mate choice" in creatures large and small.
  
  How do you feel about speed dating? Do you have signature clothes that you use to attract the opposite sex?
  

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