It’s an age-old debate that divides families, friends, states and nations: Lightning bugs or fireflies? You chased them as a kid, captured them in your hands. Maybe even put them in jars for an hour ...

As a child, I held a small interest in insects. Sure, I did my fair share of dissecting ants, and by dissecting I mean pulling off the occasional leg and separating them between their thorax and ...

Pennsylvania's state insect is the eye-catching firefly. Its scientific name is "Photuris pennsylvanica."The firefly was named the state insect on April 10, 1974.A stunning sight during midsummer ...

As a younger man, Joe Cicero saw "thousands and thousands of them." Swarms of fireflies put on a soundless fireworks show for him every summer in southern Arizona. The sight of the fireflies flashing ...

Visit Indy, Lafayette, and New Harmony to learn about our state insect, the Say’s Firefly. The firefly. The lightning bug. The romance of early summer in Indiana has always been a twinkling glow of ...

One dusky June evening, two days before the 2022 Pennsylvania Firefly Festival, the biologist Sarah Lower sat on a back porch, watching the sky for a specific gradation of twilight. A group of Lower’s ...

KELLETTVILLE, Pa. ― Every year in late June, Peggy Butler and her husband, Ken, welcome visitors to rural northwestern Pennsylvania for the chance to glimpse the rare and beguiling Photinus carolinus.

This story originally appeared on Atlas Obscura and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At the third meeting of the Moriyama City Firefly Forest Museum’s eight-week Firefly Course, a ...

Artificial light is bad news for a wide range of wildlife, but it can be a particular challenge for a unique subset of species: those that make their own glow. “With bioluminescent creatures, you can ...