An examination of lost firefly species of the US and Canada
68 points by bryanrasmussen 4 days ago | 8 comments

throwAway30303 2 hours ago
Nice to see that "swatting with badminton rackets" isn't endangering them enough to make the article. As someone who was raised in a firefly-dense rural area, let me tell you, the thrill of the bioluminescent sparks is the closest I got to cocaine as a kid.
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jodacola 59 minutes ago
I was born in and spent most of my life in the bay area before moving to Kansas City over 10 years ago (long story).

Seeing fireflies for the first time, in my 30s, was (and still is) magical.

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throwAway30303 56 minutes ago
They have blue ones in North Carolina! Fascinating.
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ProllyInfamous 13 minutes ago
Here in SE Tennessee, we have a few areas with the "congregating pulses" type (i.e. they all blink [mostly] together). But they're all green, here =D

You sound remorseful (from your youthful indiscretions); but out of curiosity... does the "glow" splat when thwacked (with a tennis racket)? or does it immediately extinguish?

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throwAway30303 27 seconds ago
It was the hellish sort of destructive behavior unique to teenage boys. Very, very fun in its own way.

The bioluminescence stays lit for some time. For example, you can paint your face with it. With the rackets, they splatter like fireworks.

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tosapple 36 minutes ago
[dead]
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Modified3019 2 hours ago
I have too many hobbies and not nearly enough time or space, but I’ve always been interested in raising glowworms at some point.

This channel has some fairly unique practical information on raising them (and some other things as well) for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/@PeppersnGlowworms/playlists

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jodacola 60 minutes ago
My knee-jerk reaction to this was, "sigh, more extinct species" - however, "lost species" in this context, as I learned from this paper, means:

> Herein, we define ‘lost species’ as those with no confirmed observation record within the past decade.

Confirmed from another source [0], which attempts to formalize the language (not that long ago!).

[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/oryx/article/lost-bu...

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Razengan 23 minutes ago
First we lost the stars in the sky now we lost the stars on Earth
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phendrenad2 3 hours ago
[flagged]
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