This is my twelfth summer in South Carolina, and until this week, I had never seen a firefly here.  (This might be complicated by the fact that I am largely a morning person.) On Tuesday, we were heading home after stopping by a friend’s house, and came around past Huyler House pond.  Our cart lights weren’t working, so we were using our phone flashlights when I was startled by a long-forgotten flash of light against the wax myrtles.  We brought the golf cart to a halt, and were surrounded by flashes.  It was a humid night, and the little glowing orbs were truly magical against a moonless sky.   Two of our three teens were in the kitchen, and I told them to come with me quickly.  (I am pretty excited about the fact that they did.) We piled into a golf cart (with lights this time) and as we rounded the corner, I turned off the lights.  Again, the meadow glowed with silent flashes.  The kids gasped.  The oldest breathed, “Oh, I haven’t seen them since I was so little.” The youngest stared, open-mouthed.  “What are they?”  It was my turn to be surprised.  At 12, he had never seen lightning bugs!  After watching for a while, since lightning bugs weren’t the only bugs flying around, we headed home. I rousted the third teen, (also a morning person), and to my delight she was also up for a surprise adventure.  Our headlights caught a raccoon ambling off into the brush, and a family of deer grazing.  “What are we looking for?,” she whispered.  I turned off the lights.  And then she, too, was caught with wonder as we watched the flashes light up the night.

Are fireflies vanishing?  And if so, why?  This week marks the fifth year of Clemson University’s research into that very question.  For at least three of them, I have peered in vain at the dark, looking for a flash, and come up empty handed.  So I was thrilled at the thought that on May 31st, I would finally have a chance to participate in the citizen science project to measure fireflies and actually provide some positive data.  Clemson’s Vanishing Firefly project encourages citizen scientists to report on the fireflies that they see in their environment. They are also gathering information about light pollution, habitat, and type of firefly, so it will be really interesting to see what the project leaders conclude.
I went online to Clemson’s site, and watched their orientation video, below. It’s long, but I learned the following interesting facts about fireflies:

• Like many insects, they have a life cycle that includes several stages.  The longest stage of their life is actually lived in the water.
• Females lay 400-1000 eggs on the surface of moist, rotting leaves.
• In 1-2 weeks, the larvae enter the water, where they will stay for about a year
• They shed their skins at least 5 times
• Larvae eat earthworms, snails, and slugs; adults are also carnivorous
• When they emerge from the water, they live underground as a pupae, and they are bioluminescent at that point, earning them the name of “glowworms.”
• Adult fireflies live 10-14 days before mating and dying.
• Males have two organs that emit light; females have one
• There are four types of flashing behaviors to look out for: j-shaped flashes, double flashes, single flashes, or 3x within 3 seconds.

I downloaded Clemson’s app for recording fireflies on my phone. On May 31st, as part of the official Firefly Kickoff, I counted at three locations on Dewees Island. Because we don’t spray with pesticides outdoors, and because there is very little light pollution here, I would expect that Dewees would be a helpful part of the research. The first location was where we first found the fireflies on Tuesday: between the big oak and the wax myrtles at the corner for the turnoff to Huyler House from Dewees Inlet drive. I opened permission for the app to use the location function. Then I made a round circle with my fingers, had Reggie start the app (it’s easier to do this with two people: a counter and a recorder) and counted the fireflies. My first estimates might have been high– I think there were about 20 fireflies in that circle, but with repeated flashes, I counted 50 or so. After a bit of practice, I could tell which fireflies were flashing repeatedly. Most of the ones I saw were flashing every three to eight seconds, but there was one j-shaped flash, and one double flash. Then, you use the phone’s camera feature to measure the ambient light. All the measures took on Dewees were zero. Another great place to see fireflies was at the corner of Lake Timicau and Pelican Flight. (Thanks to the Dewhirst family for suggesting this location!) From the crossroads, fireflies lit the way all the way to the end of Pelican Flight. I could even check the app to see where everyone else was reporting from, and what sort of numbers they were getting:

We captured one or two for a brief moment– now that they’ve become so scarce, I hate to take any out of circulation for even an hour– and took a few pictures before returning them to the evening breeze.

I’m a big fan of citizen science projects, and I love being part of a large-scale data collection project that will help us shape conservation decisions. (Here on the island, we participate in shorebird, sea turtle, and large scale birding citizen science.) Learning and measuring helps me understand how our little slice of backyard is part of a vast network of ecosystems, and increases my sense of appreciation for the natural world. But my favorite part of this week was sitting in the dark to the hum of cicadas and ocean waves and mosquitoes with my children, absorbing the wonder and the nostalgia and the sheer magic of a floating flash of light, rising slowly into the branches of a live oak.

We’d love to hear your firefly stories.

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNWAOB1VD98?rel=0]

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUpmQaLIDRY?rel=0]

This article in National Geographic talks about photographing fireflies.  I have a ways to go!