Crowds will gather in two forests in the United States in coming weeks

to see light shows created by a rare species of firefly.

These fireflies have the ability to light up with others at the same time.
The insects stay lit for 10 seconds, go dark for about a minute, then
shine bright again.

“You’re standing in a dark forest and suddenly there is abrilliance of

little lights everywhere,” said Tara Cornelisse. She spoke to the Reuters
news agency. Cornelisse is a scientist with the Center for Biological
Diversity in Portland, Oregon.

Visitors gather to watch synchronous fireflies, which appear each year from the
middle of May until the beginning of June, as they light up along the Bluff Trail
at Congaree National Park in Hopkins, South Carolina, U.S., May 21, 2019

Scientists are not sure why some fireflies light up at the exact same
time. But they believe that it helps attract reproductive partners
during the weeks-long mating season.

Three years ago, Cornelisse traveled to the Pennsylvania Firefly

Festival in the Allegheny National Forest to see the light show.

Cornelisse said of the experience, “It’s like the Milky Way flasheson
and then off. You hear people gasp ‘Ohhhh!’”

Synchronous fireflies are found only in a handful of places in the

United States. In addition to the Allegheny National Forest, they light
up the night sky in Tennessee at the Great Smoky Mountains National
Park and Oak Ridge Wildlife Management Area. Others are found in
South Carolina’s Congaree National Park, and around Cajon Bonito
Creek in Arizona.

This list of places comes from the website Firefly.org.

Other synchronous firefly species are found in Southeast Asia.

Starting life underground

Fireflies live for two years under Earth’s surface as larvae. They feed
on worms and snails, creatures that live mainly underground, notes
Sara Lewis. She wrote a book called “Silent Sparks: The Wondrous
World of Fireflies.” She is a professor at Tufts University in
Massachusetts.

Once the fireflies are adults, they rise up above the ground to spend a
few weeks finding a partner, mating and making eggs before they die,
said Lewis.

She added that researchers “know very little about why … (the fireflies)
developed this behavior that makes them an eco-touristattraction.”

Loss of fireflies

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is making final

preparations for the crowds of people coming to see its light show.

Park service officials found a way to limit the number of vehicles

entering the park. They set up a lottery for the 1,800 parking spaces on
the grounds. More than 28,000 people entered the competition. People
from over 40 states and as far away as Taiwan won the chance to leave
their car near the park’s entrance in Townsend, Tennessee.

Tickets sold out in 12 hours for a 2019 light show in the Allegheny
forest on June 22, said Peggy Butler, the event’s organizer. The park is
a short drive from the small town of Tionesta, home to fewer than 500
people. This year, officials are trying to limit the crowd to 800.

Organizers said many visitors who come to the firefly events are from
Asia.
Butler said, “They want to see the fireflies they remember but don’t see
any more in places like China and Japan, where humanimpact and
human encroachment on the environment has led to the loss of the
firefly.”

There are 2,000 different kinds of fireflies worldwide, lighting up the

night sky in yellow, green or blue. In Asia, synchronous males remain
in mangrove trees, timing their flashes to interest flying females.

The situation is generally the opposite in North America, where it is the

males who are flying around flashing and the females are sitting on the
ground, Lewis said.

The downside to firefly light shows is the likelihood that without crowd
controls and limits, humans will destroy the very thing thatdrew them
there in the first place.

“There is a danger in just the presence of those people,” Lewis said.

“You could actually wipe out the population that is so attractive.”