Firefly larvae are voracious predators, feeding on snails, slugs, and earthworms and keeping ecosystems in delicate balance. Many are stocking up on food for their whole adulthood, throughout which they will never eat. Some climb trees in pursuit of arboreal snails. Others have gills like fish that allow them to dive for aquatic snails, whose shells they then use for protection like hermit crabs. In parts of Asia, a large mollusk called an apple snail has ravaged important crops such as rice, and firefly larvae are being explored as a potential form of biocontrol to protect those nations’ food supply.
“Just think how poetic it could be if we had fireflies control snails in these agricultural systems as larvae and produce entertainment as a byproduct as adults,” says Marc Branham, an entomologist at the University of Florida.
Researchers are still investigating whether firefly numbers are dwindling. “If you ask anybody out there, they will tell you that it seems like there aren’t as many fireflies out now as there were 10 or 20 or 40 years ago,” explains Branham. The lack of data on older population numbers makes verifying their decline difficult. “But it’s pretty clear that there are some locations where people used to see many fireflies, and now you don’t see any.” Read more »
Picturing Science, currently on view in the Akeley Gallery, tells the story of Museum research through spectacular large-format images. Photographs range from multicolored meteorite montages to CT scans of shark skulls, showcasing the importance of visual tools in each of the Museum’s research departments as well as the fusion of science and art.
Only one group of animals, the deep-sea fishes of the genus Linophryne, is known to glow using two different processes: by producing their own light and by broadcasting the glimmer of a cooperative colony of bioluminescent bacteria. Several species shine to attract both prey and partner, a much-smaller male who attaches to his mate using his jaws and proceeds to fertilize her eggs while receiving nourishment in return.
An anglerfish’s lure-like esca, named for the Latin word for “bait,” is a bulb that glows with light provided by bacteria. Other marine animals such as ponyfishes and flashlight fishes also rely on such symbiotic relationships for light. Anglerfish species such as Linophryne algibarbata boast elaborate glowing strands that radiate from the fish’s chin, where a chemical reaction generates energy that is thrown off as light.
In his poem “On Discovering a Butterfly,” Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov wrote of “the secluded stronghold” where specimens are kept “safe from creeping relatives and rust.” When Nabokov caught a frosty-blue butterfly in France in 1938, he brought it to the stronghold of the American Museum of Natural History, where it still sits with a bright red label, crowning it the first and official representative, or holotype, of Lysandra cormion.
While Nabokov is most famous for his fancy prose style, he was also devoted to lepidopterology, the study of moths and butterflies. After fleeing Russia in 1940, Nabokov started his American life volunteering in the Museum’s entomology collections. He once told an interviewer, “It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all.”
The L. cormion specimen was only the beginning of the author’s contributions to the collections. In 1941, Nabokov sent nearly 500 field-caught butterflies to the Museum as he traveled with his family from the East Coast to California with stops in the Southwest. David Grimaldi, curator in the Division of Invertebrate Zoology, and Suzanne Rab Green, a curatorial assistant, are in the process of transferring these butterflies from small wax envelopes to display cases, relaxing the specimens in a vinegar vapor to soften and spread their brittle wings. Read more »
Today, April 3, 2012, marks the 175th anniversary of the birth of noted naturalist John Burroughs, a canonical figure in American nature writing, friend of Theodore Roosevelt, and key voice in the early 20th-century nature study and conservation movements. A Museum hall dedicated to the naturalist lies tucked to the side of the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians, showcasing Burroughs’ handwritten manuscripts, field glasses, and even his cane—all reminders to those who walk and write in his footsteps that there is still much to be learned from nature.
“John Burroughs is timeless,” says Lisa Breslof of the Museum’s Education Department, who is also the secretary of the John Burroughs Association, which has been headquartered at the Museum since 1921. “He embodied the Museum’s mission of studying and understanding nature, and his legacy lives on in our research and education efforts.” Read more »
