I am Lynn Faust and I live in Knoxville
Tennessee in the US and I am known as
the lightning bug lady so I am a Firefly
nerd I am very lucky having grown up in
East Tennessee
we call them lightning bugs here and we
are surrounded by many species our farm
alone has over 26 species I was actually
an adult before I realized not everyone
grew up enjoying lightning bugs chasing
him when they were little catching them
letting them go so I took him for
granted until I was an adult the light
The Light Show
show itself on a peak night it just
blows your socks off it is so beautiful
it is so mesmerizing and you were
surrounded with pulsating lights and
it’s so silent I’m always amazed how
quiet it is because it’s rhythmic and
it’s pounding but there’s no noise
there’s no sound our oldest son had a
friend they all live in Wyoming and he
brought his little girls East one summer
because in his words he said fireflies
are the closest thing to fairies and
magic that there are and he said I want
my little girls to see them it’s all
The Firefly
about sex it’s all about love it’s all
about finding a mate each little male
Firefly as soon as it emerges as an
adult is genetically programmed to give
a certain flash in a certain pattern at
a certain rate they’re flying around
hoping one of their females will see
their beautiful flash and the female
will answer back in a little flash
different than the males the glowing
How They Glow
actually began with the larvae man
Sandman’s of years ago they would glow
advertising that they tasted bad like
you might not want to eat me you might
not want to touch me because I can hurt
you back
at some point once that gene was in them
it evolved to become more of a mating
courtship flash in the adults they are
born with an enzyme called luciferase
and it combines with another thing
called luciferin and you notice both of
them have the word
lucifer in them so they’re named after
the dark angel of light lucifer that’s
where those words come from and it just
means light when they combine in the
presence of oxygen ATP magnesium and
recently they found nitric oxide you get
the flash but some fireflies have gone
Synchronicity
one step further taking their light show
to a whole new level after all what’s
better than a bright light flashing
seductively in the dark
how about 10,000 of them all flashing
together in perfect synchrony we really
don’t know the answer of why certain
species or synchronous they are
genetically programmed so it would
happen over thousands if not millions of
years this to go from a regular flash to
synchrony lots of things are synchronous
in nature schools of fish or flocks of
birds even turkeys gobbling will often
gobble in synchrony but even with the
synchronous ones the more you have the
better the synchrony our us synchronous
Flash Train
species or photon is Carolinas is the
one I’m talking about right now up in
the Great Smoky Mountains their pattern
is called a flash train and it means
they flash six times in rapid succession
followed by six seconds of dark and that
repeats over and over and over again all
night they’re all flashing those six
flashes at the same time and then the
forest goes completely dark for six
seconds and then they all begin again
and so when do you think those females
would answer they answer halfway through
the six seconds of dark and so that six
seconds of dark has a real function
that’s when the males can see their
little tiny flesh that usually happens
on the ground there are displays that
will absolutely knock your socks off
that are not synchronous you don’t just
need to see the synchronous once to see
something beautiful we have one called
the Chinese lanterns they will float
just over the ground right as darkness
falls but they’ll glow up to three
seconds they’ll glow and then it will go
off and then a few seconds later it will
begin again
and the first time we really notice the
beauty of this particular species they
were out over the water so they were
reflecting these lazy beautiful glows
and it was mesmerizing the
heebie-jeebies that gather in trees they
don’t flash in synchrony but they just
Sparkle continuously we’ve got bush
babies egg dipper spring treetop flash
shadow Gosset sink winkers they flash
very quick
Glider
I have a favorite glider of my late
mother-in-law she what a glider is it’s
not really a rocking chair but it’s this
sort of wonderful thing that glides back
and forth when you sit in it and one of
my happiest points of any day is after I
fed the horses I can hear them all
eating and I sit in the glider and I
just watched the fireflies so when the
day comes where I can’t Tromp around the
woods in the dark I can get on that
glider and still enjoy the lightning
bugs
