Love and Death on Your Lawn

All that flash and flicker you’re seeing these nights amounts to a firefly orgy. Males streaking across your lawn or garden are displaying diagnostic patterns to females, which are at rest but signal back in order to … well, you know. Some females, however, imitate the flash of other species. She’ll lure an unsuspecting male who thinks he’s about to get lucky. Instead, she kills and eats him. It’s a maneuver we call “aggressive mimicry.” She’s essentially a firefly femme fatale. Below is a common Vermont firefly, Photuris fairchildi. The males fly horizontally and issue four greenish pulses, then a 2.5-second pause, then the four pulses again, then the pause, etc. That thumbnail shot shows examples of various firefly genera. And, OK, I’ve included a lascivious shot below.