Silent sparks: the wondrous world of fireflies

239 Pages·2016·48.215 MB·English

by  Lewis, Sara

Silent Sparks

Silent Sparks
The Wondrous World of Fireflies
✳ ✳ ✳
Sara Lewis
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2016 by Sara Lewis
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton
University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
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press.princeton.edu
Jacket art and frontispiece: “Wild Dance of Golden Fairies,” courtesy of Yume Cyan / 500px
Excerpt from The Minpins, by Roald Dahl, copyright © 1991 by Felicity Dahl and the other Executors of the
Estate of Roald Dahl. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division
of Penguin Random House LLC. Published in the UK by Jonathan Cape Ltd & Penguin Books Ltd (UK).
Excerpt from Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan W. Watts, copyright © 1951 by Pantheon Books, Inc. Used by
permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin
Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from “Big Yellow Taxi,” words and music by Joni Mitchell, © 1970 (renewed) Crazy Crow Music.
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978- 0- 691- 16268- 3
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
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Printed in China
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my parents,
who lived and loved together for nearly ninety years,
and fed us wonder
when we were very young.

Contents
✳ ✳ ✳
Preface ix
CHAPTER 1
Silent Sparks 1
CHAPTER 2
Lifestyles of the Stars 13
CHAPTER 3
Splendors in the Grass 28
CHAPTER 4
With This Bling, I Thee Wed 45
CHAPTER 5
Dreams of Flying 61
CHAPTER 6
The Making of a Flasher 80
CHAPTER 7
Poisonous Attractions 100
CHAPTER 8
Lights Out for Fireflies? 119
FIELD GUIDE TO COMMON FIREFLIES 145
STEPPING OUT—FURTHER FIREFLY ADVENTURES 166
• vii
Acknowledgments 177
Notes 179
Glossary 205
References 207
Index 217
viii • COntentS
Preface
✳ ✳ ✳
Confessions of a Scientist
enraptured
Fireflies light up our world. Among our most charismatic minifauna, fireflies
might just be the best- loved insects on Earth. Time and again, fireflies magically
rekindle our sense of wonder. You might cherish some childhood memories of
chasing these silent sparks on warm summer evenings. You might be mesmerized
right now by their lights twinkling in your own backyard. I readily admit that I’m
a firefly junkie, and perhaps you are, too. If you love fireflies, then I wrote this
book for you.
I grew up a wild child, enthralled by life’s diversity. By the time I’d turned eight
I was set on becoming a biologist. Awakened to the natural world by sparkling
waterfalls, mysterious hemlock forests, and brilliant night skies, I also vowed to
stay familiar with wonder. Little did I know how challenging this would become
in my chosen career.
My scientific knowledge burgeoned as I continued my training, first at Rad-
cliffe College, and then at Duke University. For my PhD research I spent years
diving on coral reefs to decipher their secrets, occasionally working and sleeping
in an undersea habitat sunk 60 feet below the surface. For many decades, my sci-
entific career has been devoted to studying the sex lives of various creatures, in-
cluding fireflies. As an evolutionary ecologist and professor of biology at Tufts
University, I have a truly enviable job: I get paid to be curious, to make new sci-
• ix