Fireflies are on the decline
If ever there was an example of how "dot now" is a prompt for whatever's taken over my mind in the moment...
When I was a kid, fireflies were abundant. I don't think we ever caught them in jars, but I absolutely remember briefly catching them between my hands, and since I also remember being really clumsy there must have been a large enough quantity for me to catch at least one.
I can't remember the last time I saw one, to the point where I had to check with a family member that this actually used to happen. Yep, it was a thing. Nope, it's not anymore.
Which we decided makes sense. Why did fireflies evolve to light up in the first place? What evolutionary advantage would a light up butt have, effectively carrying around a bright "the kitchen is open" sign for all the birds and bats to home in on? Were we just witnessing a failed evolutionary A/B test, like nature tried out glowing butts, saw how it went, and quietly rolled it back?
No, we're just dumb. It turns out the lights on a firefly are a warning to predators. Humans might have managed to survive with logic like "oh, a shiny bug, must be food" but apparently the rest of the world knows that bright shiny things are poisonous. It's called aposematism, which can basically be described as "warning colouration." Bright colours == stay away, basically. Unless you're of the same species, and then it's some kind of mating signal.
In fact, researchers are theorizing that fireflies even have a secondary "musical" aposematic signal that alerts bats, who don't see as well as birds, to look elsewhere for their meal.
So why are fireflies disappearing? Other than the usual theories about pollution and removal of green space, apparently light pollution is also a factor, making it harder for fireflies to find each other and mate.
No business tips or analogies here, sometimes it's more than enough to sit back and marvel. But I miss the light show.
Photo: firefly 8823 by Terry Priest, CC BY-SA 2.0
