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SeattleVet

(5,477 posts)
11. From Smithsonian Magazine:
Wed Jul 1, 2020, 03:11 AM
Jul 2020

How come I see fireflies in New York, Illinois, Iowa and all through the South, but not in the West?

— Todd Schmidt | Chico, California

Well, you can see fireflies in the West, but you have to look a lot harder, says Marc Branham, a research associate at the National Museum of Natural History and an associate professor of entomology at the University of Florida. There’s kind of a firefly Continental Divide, and it has to do with flashing behavior among adults. Among Eastern species, males flash while they’re in flight to attract females; those species don’t live farther west than Kansas, except for a few isolated populations. Out West, it’s the adult females that glow, but only while they’re on the ground, and very faintly—so faintly their glow is hardly detectable even to a human eye fully adapted to the dark. And few people venture out without a flashlight or other light on.

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I really miss seeing the summer evening shows that I remember seeing when I was growing up in New York. I've told my wife about them, but we've never been in a place in the East during the season.

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