Yesterday, DH observed as how there seemed to be an extra bucketload of fireflies this year (not his exact phrasing,) and it's true. Many of them spend the daylight hours hanging around the screenhouse. As larvae, they made themselves useful eating snails and slugs and earthworms - wait a minute, earthworms? - but in their adult form, apparently, they don't do anything - at least not while any researchers are watching. Entomologists "think" some firefly species eat other insects, some "may" feed on plant nectar, and some species "probably" don't eat at all once they reach adult form. How interesting to find out such a common insect remains so mysterious to science. (Oh sure, there are 600 billion species of beetles, I know, we can't know everything about all of them, but this is a lightning bug we're talkin' about! 800 million backyard scientists have studied them at close range, over decades of time! How can so little be known??)
Anyway. It seems like there are a lot of them this year. It's pretty.
(Slap!)
Sure wish mosquitos would light up so I could avoid them.
3 comments:
Empirical backyard study result logic: Lightning bugs do not do anything, ergo all lightning bugs are male.
Oh that's annoying...it just defaults to whatever blogger role it wants. Ugh.
We don't have lightening bugs here in my neck of the woods. I had to go to Colorado and Kansas to see my first ones! They are so cool! And you're right, they aren't the only things that SHOULD light up!
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