"Fireworks" begins with "rebels"

Image credit: Floris van Breugel/Minden

Scientists initially dismissed the synchronized flickering of fireflies as an illusion or statistical problem. While research over the past 50 years has confirmed that this synchronicity does occur from time to time, scientists have rarely done rigorous research on this phenomenon, and current model data cannot explain many of their characteristics.

In the cover story of the latest issue of Science Advances, Raphael Sarfati and his colleagues studied why this synchronized behavior occurs.

In 2020, Sarfati and his colleagues traveled to a small forest in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina in the United States, and videotaped the synchronized flashing of thousands of fireflies during the peak mating season of fireflies from June 3 to 13.

The researchers then isolated a cone-shaped swarm of fireflies 30 meters long and 10 meters wide each night. Sarfati and colleagues found that the flash first began with some "rebellious" fireflies, and when there were enough fireflies, this luminous phenomenon would be connected in tandem, like a biological light wave through the entire swarm.

The findings suggest that firefly swarms may achieve this explosive collective flash through a network of visual connections influenced by terrain, where, for example, male individuals synchronize their own flash rhythm with the flash rhythm of visible "neighbors." (Xu Rui)

Source: China Science Daily