Jul. 20, 2021 By Olivia Rosane
Thousands of fireflies in Shikoku Island, Japan during June 2016. Photographer Kei Nomiyama has visited the Japanese island every year since 2012 to capture the mesmerizing images of thousands of fireflies glowing in the forest. Kei Nomiyama / Barcroft Media / Getty ImagesHow Do These Fireflies Sync Their Iconic Flashes? New Research Has Answers The synchronous display of the Photinus carolinus firefly is so mesmerizing that it draws more than 12,000 visitors a year to one of the species' chief staging grounds in the Elkmont, Tennessee section of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But despite the event's popularity, many questions remain about how and why the fireflies are able to choreograph their light show.
To help shine some light, a trio of researchers from the University of Colorado used 360-degree video recordings and three-dimensional reconstructions to "quantif[y] and characterize precisely" key aspects of the fireflies' behavior for the first time, as lead author Raphaël Sarfati told EcoWatch.
"There's a couple of results in the paper that we think draw a broader picture of how fireflies communicate and interact when they are in their natural environment," he said.
Read more:
https://www.ecowatch.com/firefly-synchronization-2653841078.html