Lampyridology (FIREFLIES) aka Sparklebuttology Updated Encore with Sara Lewis

Oh hey, it's that key under the mat that somehow nobody finds and uses to steal all of your stuff. Allie Ward. And this episode, it first aired in 2021, but it's summer and there has been a lot of discourse on fireflies lately. And this week, July 5th and 6th, marks World Firefly Day. So I reached out to this guest because I wanted to re-air this with some

updates and she said I feel like we've accomplished a ton of firefly conservation in the past four years and so we've cited some of the new studies and research and ways to volunteer with this creature because let's roll the episode. We have fireflies for you or do we have lightning bugs? We're gonna get into it. So these glowing friends they're neither flies nor true bugs rather beetles in the family lamperati But as you will soon learn, this episode's name comes at an expert's behest.

So she is a professor of biology at Tufts University in Boston. She did a TED talk on these beloved little critters. She's the author of the information-packed and entertaining book Silent Sparks, The Wondrous World of Fireflies. You may know her on Twitter under the handle Silent Sparks. And I was introduced to her through Eric Eaton, who was our wasp champion a few episodes back, and I jumped at the chance to talk to her.

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