When I was a kid in the 50s, rather greenish "lightning bugs" were rife in the Camden & Philadelphia areas, despite massive anti-mosquito DDT spraying. (Are there multiple color variants of luciferin?) Despite the DDT ban, they're gone now. Probably habitat destruction. But they were trivial to catch, so maybe an invasive predator? E.g., northern California has lately become infested with little black phorid(?) flies. They attack your food in restaurants. And they (painfully) attack scratches and cuts. Probably came in on an Asian freighter. Or maybe something is wiping out the dragonflies. —rwg On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 12:34 AM rwg <rwg@ma.sdf.org> wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [math-fun] More good news: Luciferin Exists! Date: 2019-06-28 12:21 From: Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Reply-To: math-fun <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com>
A very nice young woman from California recently told me she was floored to witness, for her first time ever, the beautiful flashing of fireflies in the dusk of Illinois.
If fireflies are not native to your home land, It's certainly worth travelling to see. In Kansas and Arkansas these bugs are well loved by just about everyone. I have never travelled to Japan, or any other part of Asia, but have heard from travellers that fireflies also exist in those locales--as well as Brazil.
In case you can not travel to look and wonder what type of math and science the yellow lights may be intimating, here are some nice blog articles I found for starters:
https://www.inhs.illinois.edu/resources/inhsreports/autumn-01/firefly/
http://www.mostlycolor.ch/2012/08/firefly.html
Cheers,
Brad