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Ologies with Alie Ward
Lampyridology (FIREFLIES) aka Sparklebuttology Updated Encore with Sara Lewis
01:07:49
Let’s light up your life and butt. World-renowned firefly expert Dr. Sara Lewis of Tufts University gives us some updates to her 2021 episode, sharing her love of a bug that many think is merely mythological. Learn how these tiny animals illuminate the night, the dos and don’ts of firefly observation, how to take good firefly photos, femme fatales, pink glowworms, secret languages, artificial lights, what’s up with their population numbers, why Western states can chill out with their lightning bug envy, and how you can ensure the world stays aglow with these beloved bugs. Also: nuptial gifts, both human and lampyridological.
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- [00:00]
Alie Ward
Introducing the new Dell AI PC.
- [00:02]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Powered by the Intel Core Ultra processor, it helps do your busy work for you so you can fast forward through editing images, designing presentations, generating code, debugging code, summarizing meeting notes, finding files, managing your schedule, responding to long emails from some guy named Jim, leaving all the time in the world for things that.
- [00:19]
Alie Ward
You actually want to do.
- [00:20]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
No offense Jim. Get a new Dell AI PC starting at $699.99 at Dell.com AI PC how those ahead? Stay ahead. I'm very choosy of supplements that I put into my gullet and also on this podcast and Ritual is one that I am currently digesting. It's literally in my stomach right now. I take it every day. Ritual is a multivitamin that science oriented people trust. They have clinical trials already done for their best selling products. I take Ritual every day because I got back some labs with some low vitamin D levels. Probably because I'm in a dark studio.
- [00:56]
Alie Ward
All day long and sometimes I eat.
- [00:58]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Cheetos for dinner and I also tend to feel better when I'm not depleted on B vitamins. So thank you Ritual for that goes down the hatch easy. It's got a minty flavor. It's not the only Ritual that I have and I like though they also have a stress relief vitamin that has L theanine which my doctor recommended for me because I tend to be on the anxious side. It's got some Ashwagandha in there, so if you're looking for some good supplements, Ritual is the one I like. So no more shady business. Rituals essential for women 18+ is a multivitamin you can actually trust. Get 25% off your first month only at ritual.comologies you can start ritual or add essential for women 18+ to your subscription today. That's ritual.comologies for 25% off these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. 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. Alie Ward in 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 mark 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.
- [02:24]
Alie Ward
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 Lampy Rati. But as you will soon Lear, this episode's name 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 the Wondrous World of Fireflies. You may know her on Twitter under the handle silentsparks. 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 to know her work in just a sec. But super quick thank you to everyone@patreon.com Ologies for making this show possible for the four years we've been around and for submitting great questions every week.
- [03:20]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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. The only downside? You get smarter and start to question every source of fictional entertainment SVGD makes. We're here to load up your brains. We're here to load up some flimflam and I guess spoil the rest of entertainment.
- [03:47]
Alie Ward
Sorry. And thank you to everyone whose reviews I creepily read. Literally all of them. Okay, onward Sparkle butt Ology. You're gonna learn the etymology in a minute. I'm not even 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 Sparklebutologist, Dr. Sarah Lewis.
- [05:12]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
My name is Sarah Lewis and I use she. Her. Let us dive.
- [05:18]
Alie Ward
Okay, great. Dr. Lewis, thank you so much for joining urology. Is it lamp urology? Would that be what it is?
- [05:28]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 Lamprey. I don't like that one at all. What about lightning bug? 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.
- [05:55]
Alie Ward
Sparklebuttology it is.
- [05:57]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Okay, I like that one too. Good. We're agreed.
- [06:01]
Alie Ward
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?
- [06:17]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
So. 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, don't really like insects. In fact, they have kind of, you know, enthymophobia.
- [06:41]
Alie Ward
So what? We don't like bugs? Honey, they don't like bugs.
- [06:45]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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.
- [07:02]
Yeah.
- [07:02]
Alie Ward
What do you think they think they are? Fairies.
- [07:04]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Magical fairies? Yeah, absolutely. 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.
- [07:29]
Alie Ward
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 to debunk is that fireflies are non existent, but they're not fiction, they're real.
- [07:44]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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?
- [07:50]
Alie Ward
What other myths do you feel like people come at you to ask about?
- [07:53]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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. There's actually about, well, more than 2,000 different species of firefly. And it turns out discovering new ones all the time.
- [08:38]
Alie Ward
Ooh, that's cool.
- [08:40]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
How.
- [08:40]
Alie Ward
How big and how small do they get?
- [08:42]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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. 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 Lampragera. 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 fl, like, you know, why bother? I'll just sit there, let the males come to me.
- [09:40]
Alie Ward
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 Jabba the Hutt 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?
- [10:16]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 the grass and slowly rising up, and there 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.
- [11:29]
Alie Ward
When did you sort of turn your sail from the marine studies back to land?
- [11:37]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Yeah, well, you know, it's been us 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 US 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.
- [12:31]
Alie Ward
Dr. Lewis got her PhD in Coral Reef Ecology in 1984 from.
- [12:35]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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.
- [13:08]
Alie Ward
Would you say that's primarily why they're flashing their Morse code Is that pretty much booty calls, like, in a literal sense?
- [13:16]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 were 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 eavesdrop on the courtship conversations of these different kinds of fireflies and then to be able to play back, just to tweak the signals 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 US 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.
- [15:10]
Alie Ward
She ghosted you.
- [15:11]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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? How about this? Is this better or is this better? And you can do that to a female firefly. She will tell you, yeah, this is the signal that I like.
- [15:39]
Alie Ward
Wow, are you doing that with little, like, LED lights?
- [15:42]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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.
- [16:25]
Alie Ward
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?
- [16:35]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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. 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.
- [17:54]
Yeah, that's what it is.
- [17:55]
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. 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?
- [19:16]
Yeah.
- [19:17]
Alie Ward
I mean, if you kind of know through advertising, like, okay, longer pulse, bigger gift, then there you go. Like, bigger sandwich is gonna bring me.
- [19:27]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Absolutely. We call it firefly bling.
- [19:30]
Alie Ward
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 Jarrett then simply, my fiance, ran out to get my favorite latte as kind of a prenuptial 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?
- [20:07]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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. For after a while. But, you know, it's. It's all worth it. Yeah, it's fabulous to be able to bring some of the magic of these Creatures to light and to let people know that they're real. And they're really, really kind of amazing.
- [21:30]
Alie Ward
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?
- [21:44]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Yeah. 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 because there are so many. 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 including. You gotta 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.
- [23:03]
Alie Ward
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, Microphotus 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 minisode 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 bug.
- [24:05]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Lightning bugs.
- [24:06]
Alie Ward
Okay, I hope one of you said peenie wallies, because a university Of Cambridge linguistics professor by the name of Bert Voe also needed to know firefly or lightning bug. So he asked 10,000Americans what they call Sparklebutts. 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 peenie 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 peenie wallies, especially now, because.
- [25:11]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 of the Natural History Museum of Utah, and they've been mapping flashing fireflies in Utah, Nevada, Nearby States 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 new not true. You do have them, and they're really, really beautiful. So, yeah.
- [26:28]
Alie Ward
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 our life cycle?
- [26:46]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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. 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.
- [27:35]
Alie Ward
So there are a few thousand species of fireflies and as adults they're between 5 and 25 millimeters long, just an inch long at the biggest. But in their larval forms they're little.
- [27:48]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
And they're hungry and it's the larval stage where they are, they're eating and they're actually, they're 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, 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.
- [28:49]
Alie Ward
Do they hunt in packs?
- [28:51]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Clever girl.
- [28:52]
Alie Ward
Are they hunting in packs like wolves?
- [28:55]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 them. Oh man, it's just kind of gory like I 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.
- [29:22]
Alie Ward
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, and.
- [29:39]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 hey, anyways, that's what, but that's the, 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, they're just, you know, 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, 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 their 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 a nuptial gift.
- [31:13]
Alie Ward
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, 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 naughty, 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 is 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?
- [32:35]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 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, 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.
- [34:02]
Alie Ward
Butterfly or say brightly colored poison dart frogs or skunk stripes. So this yo, you do not want this type of coloration has a name and it's aposematism, Taken from the Greek words for away sign. And aposematism was coined in 1890 by a British zoologist who had a mustache like a snow white feather boa. Sir Edward bagnaled 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 sparklebutology.
- [34:38]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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, you know, 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?
- [35:39]
Alie Ward
Imagine a dating app that's like oh my God, you're toxic, I'm toxic. And then you just can't stop sending text sex with your butts. That's the firefly life. And so this week for this encore.
- [35:50]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Dr. Lewis would like to keep these lovers alive and ask that her donation go to fireflyers international.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 shelter 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 debut. So that is fireflyers international.net and that is linked in the show notes and.
- [36:36]
Alie Ward
That donation we made in her name was possible by some word approved sponsors of the show who you may hear.
- [36:41]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
About now.
- [36:44]
Alie Ward
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [36:59]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
And breathe.
- [37:00]
Alie Ward
Oh sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh sorry.
- [37:07]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Namaste.
- [37:08]
Alie Ward
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts.
- [37:13]
Narrator
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- [38:00]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
50 years after Jaws scared an entire generation out of the water. I look, damn. There was this great big head, these big white teeth.
- [38:10]
Alie Ward
Radiolab is pulling you back in.
- [38:13]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
It was just like so much fear building of what's gonna come out of that blue? We're gonna drop down into the water. It's coming towards you.
- [38:20]
Bait to show you Sharks.
- [38:21]
Oh, it's huge. In a way you've never seen them before. Anything you dig down on is fascinating in these creatures.
- [38:29]
These are like swimming fossils.
- [38:30]
Alie Ward
We found found stories about ancient sharks.
- [38:33]
Narrator
Baby sharks, sharks that can fly, sharks.
- [38:36]
Alie Ward
That might cure cancer.
- [38:37]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Whoa. Yes. Sharks are crazy. And we're even going swimming with them.
- [38:42]
Alie Ward
This makes me so nervous.
- [38:43]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
We've got five episodes for you. A whole week of sharks.
- [38:47]
Alie Ward
We saw a white shark. Listen to Swimming with Shadows. A Radiolab week of sharks. Wherever you get podcast. Cass. 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.
- [39:20]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 will. 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?
- [39:58]
Alie Ward
Got it. Okay. So many people wanted to know about catching them, and if you catch them and put them in a jar with. With grass, how bad is it for them? And will they die immediately?
- [40:10]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 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. 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. The sugars that are in 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 pred 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, go running into his room. He was fine. The fireflies were not. And then we had to explain, like, the whole predation thing and. Yeah, so be careful to only include the little guys and none of the big predatory ones.
- [42:27]
Alie Ward
Oh, no. So, yes, photuras. 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 lucibufogens. Lucibufogens, 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 Hardke, Kevin Glover, Lisa Ma. Want to know why? Do they smell that way? Do they smell?
- [43:15]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 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 disturbe 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.
- [44:32]
Alie Ward
Side note, I have never sniffed a pini 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 lucibufagin steroids can make a frog or a bird think twice and maybe barf it right up. Although plenty of folks were probably 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 butt ology smell is the sweet odor of love and warnings. Aha. So sniff a firefly.
- [45:15]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Sniff a firefly today or tomorrow or tonight. Yeah.
- [45:19]
Alie Ward
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?
- [45:29]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 plant. Some 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.
- [47:20]
Alie Ward
So you're not letting your lawn go to shit. You're making a romantic environment where sparklebutt beetles can get nasty. So what else do you need to do to set the mood and help them thrive?
- [47:33]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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, the baby fireflies spend months to years living underground. So if you're treating your yard or your, 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 specifically specific pests. And then also in addition to sort of shading, 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 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 that's a great way to attract fireflies to your yard.
- [48:55]
Alie Ward
Great. Alexis Cully, first time question asker wants to know if any fireflies flash different colors.
- [49:01]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Yeah, so there are slightly different colors and they, so there are tiny, tiny differences in the shape of the enzyme luciferase that produces that's inside the firefly lantern. And, and that is one of the players that produces the, actually is the catalyst for the Bioluminescence. And so tiny differences in the shape of that enzyme actually create different colors. And so in North 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 color bioluminescence. And then there's some late night fireflies that flash with a very green bioluminescence. And so they do have different colors.
- [49:54]
Alie Ward
Oh, okay. Do any change their colors like an LED light at all?
- [50:00]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Ooh, that would be cool. Not yet, but I think they're working on it. We're looking at for mutations right now.
- [50:07]
Alie Ward
Oh, amazing. So many great questions. Casey Hanmer wrote in and said, I think, think Luciferase is an amazing name for a child, but my wife says no. What the fuck? Help me out. Absolutely.
- [50:19]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Yes. Luciferase. I love it. Yeah. You know, hey, Ace. Yes. It's great.
- [50:27]
Alie Ward
That is great. And it means light, right? Lucifera means light, right?
- [50:32]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Right. Luciferase means light bearer. It's a beautiful name for a kid.
- [50:36]
Alie Ward
Also, how sick 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 Mila Kuda wants to know what's the deal with blue ghost fireflies?
- [51:21]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Mm. 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, 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.
- [52:03]
Narrator
And.
- [52:04]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 spectrograph, it actually turns out to be green.
- [52:22]
Alie Ward
Oh.
- [52:23]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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, 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.
- [53:50]
Alie Ward
Yeah. And then. Which is probably the last thing people want to be doing without realizing that they're doing it. So.
- [53:55]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Yeah, yeah, you wouldn't. How would you ever know?
- [53:58]
Alie Ward
Yeah. Patrons Allie Gibson, first time question asker. Ivali Sanchez, Chris Moore, Allie Barg, Rose Mooneyards, Kent Dervin Amber. And so many people. Claire Weldon, Tegan Mortimer, first time question asker Anthony, Katie Courtright, 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 Stahl 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?
- [54:37]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 emergency emerging the following spring and summer and sometimes in a wet year, you know, there's lots of prey. There's. 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, you know, people on the street have noticed that there just aren't as many fireflies as there used to be. And there's. And this holds across the board around the world. It's not just 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 the, 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.
- [56:15]
Alie Ward
So, yes, some sperm charcoal butts do well sauntering between various habitats. But other tender, glowy babies have evolved to thrive in only one specific ecological niche.
- [56:28]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 US 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 a 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 Xerces Society in the US and you can go to the Xerces Society website, just Google Xerces 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 fireflies, friendly lighting guidelines. And you can get all that stuff at the Xerces website.
- [58:15]
Alie Ward
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 Xerces 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@xerces.org and also get Dr. Sarah Lewis 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. 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.
- [59:07]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
People can help out with?
- [59:09]
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, 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 very exciting time to be a community scientist for fireflies. We really fireflies are out for a short time 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 US 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.
- [60:22]
So 2025, Allie here and Dr. Lewis shared in her update that new projects are rolling out in North America and el 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 is 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 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.
- [61:46]
Alie Ward
So that's a good news.
- [61:47]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 in their habitat. 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 but not physically?
- [62:42]
Alie Ward
Oh, and what about photography? Any, any hints on capturing good firefly photos?
- [62:49]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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, from the photograph, but I have no idea how they do that.
- [63:20]
Alie Ward
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. If you don't have a fancy camera that is also not a phone. Then there are apps like Pro Cam 8 that have presets like Low light and Light Tray. 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.
- [63:56]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Actually, I'll just put a shout out here to one of the firefly photographers we worked with very closely on our conservation efforts has a website. It's called Firefly Experience. His name is Radim 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.
- [64:30]
Alie Ward
Cool. Last listener question. Sarah Hoover, Cameron Brown and RJ Doidge all asked if you have thoughts on the song Fireflies by Owl City. If it ever gets stuck in your head.
- [64:43]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Have you heard of this?
- [64:46]
That's so funny. Yes. I don't really like that song because, you know, I don't know the 10,000 hug stuff from 10,000.
- [64:57]
Alie Ward
Like.
- [64:59]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Yeah, it's not my favorite firefly song. You know there's a really cool, there's a glow worm 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 fireflies. Anyways, Mills Brothers Glowworm song. I like that one a whole lot better.
- [65:22]
When you got a glow, you gotta.
- [65:24]
Glow, glow, it'll glow worm glow.
- [65:27]
Alie Ward
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 some rocks. On the topic of meh. Last questions, I always ask everyone your least favorite thing about about being a sparklebutologist or least favorite thing about fireflies? Is there anything that's just an annoyance or you wish was different?
- [66:02]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Absolutely. And it's 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 of my students and for myself working on Fireflies, it's 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 wine 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, hear 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.
- [66:57]
Alie Ward
And lastly, difficult to answer, but your favorite thing about fireflies or being a firefly scientist.
- [67:05]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Wow. Yeah. So this is easy because the thing that I, 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, the best ambassadors for Earth's natural magic. And so, man, I feel so lucky to be like, you know, representing them 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.
- [68:26]
Alie Ward
Well, they, I think they're lucky to have a spokesperson as knowledgeable and enthusiastic as you for sure.
- [68:33]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
You are very kind. Thank you.
- [68:36]
Alie Ward
Thank you so much for doing this. This is just a joy. I love this.
- [68:41]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
It's been really, really fun. Thank you so much for inviting me.
- [68:45]
Alie Ward
So, yes, get Sarah Lewis book, Silent Spark. It's linked in the show notes below.
- [68:49]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
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 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, ugh, to be a firefly on the wall there you would make so many new friends. And Dr. Lewis also said to the Ologies community, thanks again for helping helping to keep the firefly magic alive. And we will link Dr. Lewis 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 and studies and maps and pictures that we talked about. In this episode. We are at Ologies on Blue sky and Instagram. I'm ward with one L on both. Thank you Erin Talbert for admin in the Ologies Podcast Facebook group and for being my friend for decades. Thank you Noel Dilworth for schedule producing Ologies. Susan Hale managing directs everything from the tiny stuff to the giant stuff. Steven Ray Morris and Jarrett Sleeper of mindjam 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 Ologies 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 Smallogy's episodes which are geniuses rated and kids safe and they are in their own podcast feed. Wherever you get podcasts, they're great for kids and road trips. Just look for Smallogies. They're also linked in the show notes. Ologies Merch is at ologiesmerch.com and join our Patreon. You can find us at patreon.com 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 my chest.
- [71:03]
Alie Ward
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 at 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? Before, but now you know. Sorry. Bye. Bye. Pachydermatology, homeology, cryptozoology, litology, nanotechnology, meteorology, olivectology, mapology, serology, cell.
- [71:51]
Dr. Sarah Lewis
Especially fireflies or bucks lighter.