Blink Twice If You Love Me

I have always liked fireflies, or glow-worms as some people would call them. I never knew before until fairly recently that there are many varieties of them, but all with the same characteristic that they glow at night. Maybe they glow too during the day, it's just that they are not noticeable in broad daylight. As a child I used to try to catch some, put them in a clear glass jar, to test whether I could read a book purely by the light they gave. I could! I now know that it's cruel, but children tend to be selfish until they learn to have a conscience.

After leaving the suburb and becoming very much a city girl soon after, I didn't get to see any fireflies any more. I still like them but, frankly, apart from very intrigued by them as a very young child, I seldom gave them a second thought. Therefore it's once again quite intriguing for me to read about their love life.

They apparently communicate a lot with one another and can distinguish the different species. Those flying about showing off their brilliant lights were all males, while the females stay down nearer ground amongst shrubs and vegetation observing, and selecting the ones they like better for a mate. They will blink twice and repeat it to the lucky chosen. How on earth they can signal or respond to the right one amongst hundreds is quite a mystery! 

 
Sara Lewis knows all about them having dedicated 16 years observing and investigating. She is an ecologist in the University of tufts in Massachusetts, leads a team of investigators of these insects' habits, and especially their communicative system, and how their brilliance is very much the most important feature that greatly influence their love life, or lack or it, and a determining factor of their reproduction, or not.

So when the male fly around and hovered over the females, blinking like mad their 'headlights', the latter, attracted by a certain male (again, how she could is mind boggling as there are usually hundreds of them and they all look alike, to me at least, but obviously not to the 'firefly ladies'), she will blink (her light) twice, a clear 'Come-hither' signal to the male. And they usually choose their own kind. Once established their relationship, they stay monogamy. Cute huh? I can't tell you much more about them yet; have to read the rest of the very long report first.

Tags:glowworm,firefly

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