Festival of Lights
Biology professors Sarah Lower and Gregory Pask brought students from their Bucknell labs to western Pennsylvania to do research and outreach to the general public this June at the annual Pennsylvania Firefly Festival.
Clockwise from top left: Professor Sarah Lower hunts for Chinese lantern fireflies in the vegetation. Lower shows some firefly festival visitors a close-up video of a firefly larva. Lourenço Martins ’21 shows Sarah Bain ’21 and Lower his successful capture. Hanh Tran ’20 verifies the identity of a firefly. Martins finds a day-active firefly, which emit chemicals rather than light to find one another. Tran searches for fireflies at dusk.
Clockwise from top left: Professor Sarah Lower hunts for Chinese lantern fireflies in the vegetation. Lower shows some firefly festival visitors a close-up video of a firefly larva. Hanh Tran ’20 verifies the identity of a firefly. Lourenço Martins ’21 shows Sarah Bain ’21 and Lower his successful capture. Below: Tran searches for fireflies at dusk. Martins finds a day-active firefly, which emit chemicals rather than light to find one another.
Top to bottom: Professor Sarah Lower hunts for Chinese lantern fireflies in the vegetation. Lower shows some firefly festival visitors a close-up video of a firefly larva. Lourenço Martins ’21 shows Sarah Bain ’21 and Lower his successful capture. Hanh Tran ’20 verifies the identity of a firefly. Below: Tran searches for fireflies at dusk. Martins finds a day-active firefly, which emit chemicals rather than light to find one another.
Clockwise from top left: Sarah Bain ’21 checks to see if the firefly she caught is male or female. Wearing a red LED headlamp to minimize disturbance to the fireflies, Professor Sarah Lower places a firefly in a tube. Time-lapse photo of the synchronized flashes of Photinus carolinus fireflies. From left: Cheyenne McKinley ’20, Sarah Bain ’21, Hanh Tran ’20, Professor Lower, Lourenço Martins ’21, Joanna Pask, Heather Pask, Elliot Pask and Professor Greg Pask, biology. Lower reaches into the tall grass to reveal a partially hidden firefly female signaling to males.
Above: Sarah Bain ’21 checks to see if the firefly she caught is male or female. Below: Wearing a red LED headlamp to minimize disturbance to the fireflies, Professor Sarah Lower places a firefly in a tube. Time-lapse photo of the synchronized flashes of Photinus carolinus fireflies. Cheyenne McKinley ’20, Sarah Bain ’21, Hanh Tran ’20, Professor Lower, Lourenço Martins ’21, Joanna Pask, Heather Pask, Elliot Pask and Professor Greg Pask, biology. Lower reaches into the tall grass to reveal a partially hidden firefly female signaling to males.
“I’ll often describe firefly flashes as Morse code, where each species has its own code.”
Professor Sarah Lower
Photos: Carla Long