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b"Thanks to Adam for the great suggestion of synchronous fireflies! Let's learn about lightning bugs (or fireflies) in general, and in particular the famous synchronous fireflies!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nHow Fireflies Glow and What Signals They're Sending\\n\\nFurther watching:\\n\\nTennessee Fireflies\\n\\nSynchronizing Fireflies in Thailand (it shows an experiment to encourage the fireflies to start blinking by the use of LEDs)\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nThis week we\\u2019re going to learn about a bioluminescent insect, the firefly, also called the lightning bug, but we\\u2019ll especially learn about a specific type of various species called synchronous fireflies! This is a suggestion from Adam, so thank you, Adam!\\n\\nFireflies are beetles and they\\u2019re common throughout much of the world. I actually call them lightning bugs, but firefly is faster to say so I\\u2019m going to use that term in this episode. They\\u2019re most common in temperate and tropical areas, especially around places with a lot of water and plant cover, like marshes and wooded streams. This is because the firefly spends most of its life as a larva, and it needs to be able to hide from predators and also find the tiny insects, snails and slugs, worms, and other small prey that it eats. Adults of some species don\\u2019t eat at all and may not even have mouths, while adults of other species may eat nectar, pollen, or other insects.\\n\\nThere are probably two thousand species of firefly, with more being discovered all the time. While they vary a lot, all of them emit light in one way or another. We\\u2019ll talk about how they produce the light in a minute, but first let\\u2019s talk about why they light up. In many species, the larvae can light up and do so to let predators know they taste bad. The larvae are usually called glowworms, although that name is also applied to other animals.\\n\\nSome firefly species don\\u2019t light up at all as adults, but many species use their lights to find a mate. Every species has a distinct flash pattern. In some species, the female can\\u2019t fly but will sit on the ground or in foliage and watch for her species\\u2019 flash pattern from males flying around. When she sees a male she likes, often one whose light is brightest, she signals him by flashing back. Sometimes a pair will flash back and forth for hours, sometimes just minutes, but eventually the male will find the female and they will mate.\\n\\nAs a result, the firefly is sensitive to light pollution, because it needs to see the flashing of potential mates. If there\\u2019s too much light from buildings and street lamps, fireflies can\\u2019t find each other. They\\u2019re also sensitive to many other factors, so if you have a lot of fireflies where you live, you can be proud to live in a healthy ecosystem. But overall, the number of fireflies are in decline all over the world due to habitat loss and pollution of various kinds.\\n\\nSo how does a firefly light up? It\\u2019s a chemical reaction that happens in the lower abdomen in a special organ. The organ contains a chemical called luciferin [loo-SIF-er-in] and an enzyme called luciferase [loo-SIF-er-ace], both of which are found in many insects that glow, along with some other chemicals like magnesium. The firefly controls when it flashes by adding oxygen to its light-producing organ, since oxygen reacts with the chemicals to produce light.\\n\\nFemale fireflies in the genus Photinus, which are common in North America and other areas, can\\u2019t fly and instead look for potential mates to fly by. When a male sees a female\\u2019s answering flash, he lands near her. But sometimes when the male lands, he\\u2019s greeted not by a female Photinus but by a female Photuris firefly. Photuris females often mimic the flash patterns of Photinus, and they do so to lure the males close so they can EAT THEM. Photuris is sometimes called the femme fatale firefly as a result. Some species of Photuris will also mimic the flash patterns of other firefly species,"