Category Archives: Blog

Conspiring to be part of the ✨magic ✨!

Fireflies in Japan

In Japan, fireflies are called hotaru (ほたる) and they’re a summertime insect just like in the U.S. Although about 40 different firefly species live here, Genji and Heike fireflies are the most popular.

hotaru_005

Luciola cruciata

Unlike U.S. fireflies, these two species have an aquatic larval stage, so they are commonly found around rivers and streams (Genji fireflies) or rice-fields (Heike fireflies). They’re so popular they even appear on stamps & manhole covers!

Moriyama manhole cover
Moriyama manhole cover
Genji firefly stamp
Genji firefly stamp

Glow-worms in pop culture

Glowworm Wills cigarette card

1922 Wills cigarette card

During the last century, many cigarette manufacturers tucked nifty collectible cards inside  every cigarette pack. Sometimes these cigarette cards had wonderful artwork depicting fascinating scientific tidbits. This 1922 card of the common European glow-worm show both a male (right, inside circle) and a female (left, on grass). The two look surprisingly different in this and other glow-worm species! While the male looks like a pretty typical adult beetle, the grub-like female doesn’t: for one thing, she doesn’t have  wings, so she’ll never be able to fly. Full of eggs, this plump female crawls up onto a perch and glows for hours trying to attract a flying, unlit male.

The glow-worm’s undeniable romantic charm was also captured in this hit song, which  the Mills Brothers recorded in the 1950s – enjoy!

 

 

 

 

We harvested 100 million U.S. fireflies?

Believe it or not, from 1960 until the mid-1990s, the Sigma Chemical Company (now called Sigma-Aldrich) harvested about 3 million wild fireflies every year. Each summer, they ran newspaper ads to recruit thousands of collectors across the U.S., who got paid a penny per firefly (with a $20 bonus if they sent in more than 200,000 fireflies).

8-3 Sigma ad
sigma

What did they do with all those fireflies?

They extracted firefly luciferase, the light-producing enzyme, then sold it for use in food safety testing and research.

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Synchronicity

Stop what you’re doing and watch this short video taken in Samut Prakan province, Thailand. Turn off the lights, go full screen, and get ready to be blown away by thousands of male fireflies regularly synchronizing their flashes to attract females. They synchronize naturally, although here the fireflies (known as Pteropytx malaccae) have been triggered by some flashing LED lights. This video is part of a 2015 installation work by Robin Meier & Andre Gwerder, it’s called “Synchronicity (Thailand).”

You can also watch some spectacular displays of the U.S. synchronous firefly, Photinus carolinus, which lives parts of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. You can read more about these traveling synchronizers in Silent Sparks (Chapter 2: Lifestyles of the Stars).

Produced by Audemars Piguet Art Commission, Le Brassus
Director of Photography: Nikolai Zheludovich; Editing: Mariko Montpetit
Special thanks to Anchana Thancharoen and her team at Kasetsart University, Bangkok

Gathering Wonder – Dedication

For my parents –

They lived and loved together for nearly ninety years, and fed us wonder when we were very young.

Silent Sparks is dedicated to my mother and father, who lived to the venerable ages of 95 and 99, respectively. And they were five years old when they first met.

H&V 2010 vignetteThey showed me how to appreciate the natural world. I grew up a wild child, roaming free. I swam under sparkling waterfalls, wandered through mysterious hemlock forests, and slept beneath brilliant night skies. Early on, I got hooked on life’s diversity. They loved to learn about my scientific adventures with fireflies. So when I decided two years ago to write a popular book, they were especially delighted.

IMG_0046

Author, capturing wonder (ca. 1956)

 

I’m writing this post during the darkest days of December. Just a few weeks ago, my Dad exhaled his last breath. He was ancient, but he was never old. He used his iPad to keep up on world news, and days before he died he completed the Sunday New York Times Crossword, in pen, as always. Dad Skyped daily with relatives and friends –  although scattered through space, these  lifelong friends showed up for daily  visits in his living room.

Though my parents will never get the chance to read Silent Sparks, I will remain eternally grateful to them for the gift of wonder. So that’s why I dedicated this book to them.

Dad cared lovingly for Mom as she declined in the grip of Parkinson’s.