The Outdoor Journal by Kyle Carroll

LIGHTNING BUGS

If you have spent anytime outdoors in the evenings lately or maybe driven through a creek bottom after dark, you’ve been treated to a pretty spectacular light display. Lightning bugs or “fireflies” have been putting on a show, literally. They are really not “flies at all but one of the 2,000 species of Beatles in the world. 

Fireflies don't put on those spectacular summer displays just to entertain us.   According to the blog, ThoughtCo, “Male fireflies cruising for mates flash a species-specific pattern to announce their availability to receptive females. An interested female will reply, helping the male locate her where she's perched, often on low vegetation”.

Fireflies are bioluminescent, meaning they are living creatures that produce light, a trait shared with a handful of other terrestrial insects. “An incandescent light bulb gives off 90% of its energy as heat and only 10% as light, which you'd know if you've touched one that's been on for a while. If fireflies produced that much heat when they lit up, they would incinerate themselves. Fireflies produce light through an efficient chemical reaction called chemiluminescence that allows them to glow without wasting heat energy. For fireflies, 100% of the energy goes into making light; accomplishing that flashing increases the firefly metabolic rates an astonishingly low 37% above resting values.”

LED lights were created in part by studying the efficiency through which lightning bugs produce their flashing light show and scientists have developed remarkable uses for firefly luciferase, the enzyme that produces bio-luminescence in fireflies. It has been used as a marker to detect blood clots, to tag tuberculosis virus cells, and to monitor hydrogen peroxide levels in living organisms. Hydrogen peroxide is believed to play a role in the progression of some diseases, including cancer and diabetes.

In some areas, lightning bug populations are declining because light pollution depresses the ability for fireflies to find mates and reproduce. Now I feel justified in disliking those extra bright LED lights you see in a few places. Over all, out here in the country, the fireflies are doing fine.