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13K. 2M views 7 years ago. Each year in late spring the Great Smoky Mountains National Park hosts a special light show, thanks to a species of beetle native to the region. These are the synchronous...
- 2 min
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- National Geographic
- Firefly magic
- Mysteries remain
As for how, work in Thailand by researchers John and Elisabeth Buck dating back to the 1960s suggests that synchronous fireflies get in sync by slightly adjusting the timing of their light cycles based on nearby flashes. And these can be altered by the presence of other fireflies, or even artificial light inputs.
These slight tweaks, by individuals over time, gradually lead them all to synchronize, explains Steven Strogatz, a mathematician who specializes in synchrony and its manifestations throughout the natural world. (Read more about how fireflies glow.)
Indeed, a 1990 paper by Strogatz and a colleague showed that flashing fireflies can act like “coupled oscillators,” whereby these slight adjustments by individuals cause the group to “self-organize into synchrony.” The same general principle is at play in, say, the the human heart’s pacemaker cells, which must fire as one entity.
But that leaves many questions unanswered. Among them: If males want to stand out, then why signal in a synchronized fashion?
Sara Lewis, a firefly researcher at Tufts University, says synchrony could (ironically) evolve as an accidental byproduct of males attempting to compete for females’ attention.
In some insects and amphibians that chirp or croak within a few seconds of each other, in a seemingly synchronized fashion, males that signal first tend to be more attractive to females, some research has shown.
None of this answers the question, however, as to how males stand out. “There’s no individuality there,” Moiseff says.
When a female signals to a male, it seems impossible for her to be able to send her message to only one individual, he adds. So there’s likely some kind of communication and courtship behavior involved after multiple males approached a female, but these remain unknown, he says.
Indeed, in the case of the Nanacamilpa fireflies, females glow softly on the ground while the males synchronously flash. (Read more about how bioluminescence works.)
Each female is often then mobbed by many males, which can form thriving masses, explains Tania López Palafox, a doctoral student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who studies the insects.
This habit also makes them vulnerable to the growing tide of tourism. Walking in these forests can kill females, López says, but also compacts the earth, where the fireflies live as larvae for many months eating soft-bodied animals like worms and snails before emerging adults.
Along with Mexico, synchronous fireflies have become big tourist draws in places including the U.S., Thailand, Taiwan, and other spots in Southeast Asia.
- 3 min
- Douglas Main
University of Colorado research assistant Owen Martin explains the importance of studying how fireflies synchronize individually in the Great Smoky Mountains...
Sep 20, 2022 · Some fireflies have a mystifying gift for flashing their abdomens in sync. New observations are overturning long-accepted explanations for how the synchronization occurs, at least for some species.
May 26, 2024 · According to the National Park Service, there are just three types of fireflies in North America that are synchronous, meaning they coordinate their belly lanterns to flash at exactly the same...
- Pien Huang
North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains National Park is home to rare fireflies that can synchronize their flashing-light patterns. Six flashes at a time, at first independently, then in unison, make up an elaborate mating dance that can only be seen for two weeks each year. Here's a look.
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Jul 7, 2021 · The spontaneous synchronization of certain species of fireflies, such as Photinus carolinus in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, has long baffled humans who observed...
