Southwest Spring Firefly: The Gateway Bug

In this episode of Rarefied, host Meredith Meeker introduces listeners to the Southwest Spring Firefly, an understudied species primarily found in Arizona. Joined by Rachel Laura, Deputy Executive Director at Friends of the Verde River and a PhD student at the University of Arizona, the episode dives into the unique characteristics, life cycle, and habitat of this rare firefly. Rachel shares insights from her field research, including the challenges of studying an imperiled species and the importance of conserving wetland habitats. Listeners will also learn fascinating facts about firefly bioluminescence and the broader ecological significance of protecting these enchanting insects.

https://www.fireflyatlas.org/ 

 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0259379

00:00 Introduction: A Legacy in Nature

00:23 Welcome to Rarefied: Meet Your Host

00:51 Spotlight on the Southwest Spring Firefly

01:54 Firefly Basics and Unique Traits

02:57 Habitat and Ecology of the Southwest Spring Firefly

05:35 Research and Conservation Efforts

09:30 Field Research Insights and Discoveries

11:49 Challenges and Methods in Firefly Research

20:13 The Magic and Importance of Fireflies

23:05 Community Involvement and Conservation Tips

27:36 Future Research and Final Thoughts

40:37 Conclusion: Every Species Has a Story

Transcript

Theme Song 0:00

In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy. Let's listen close, let's take a stand, to keep the wild across the land. In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy.

Meredith 0:23

Welcome you found us. Let the adventure begin. This is rarefied the podcast where we're going to learn to love some of our rarest and most imperiled species. I'm your host Meredith Meer, and in this week's episode we are heading south to Arizona, but surprisingly, we're not headed into the desert this week. We are featuring a species that isn't actually listed as endangered yet, but depending on the results from our guest research, it just might be. Let me introduce you to the Southwest Spring Firefly. The Southwest Spring Firefly is an extremely understudied species and only has one scientific paper published on it. Based on the few observations we have, it's globally considered to be imperiled, but has no official status in the us. Our guest today is trying to change that. I am joined by Rachel, Laura, who is the deputy Executive Director at Friends of the Verde River and is also working on her PhD at the University of Arizona on the Southwest Spring Firefly. So let's jump into it. We are talking about the southwest spring Firefly, a pretty niche species. I'm guessing most people. Haven't heard of this specific species, but might be more familiar with fireflies in general. If you could start us off with maybe a primer of what is a firefly and then maybe what is a southwest spring firefly or like what makes the species unique?

Rachel Laura 2:06

Okay, so fireflies are actually beetles and they're in the family lamper day. There are other beetles in other families that also are bioluminescent, but fireflies, you know, in the lamber day family are the most well known bioluminescent, beetles. The Southwest Spring Firefly is a species that is primarily known from Arizona in the United States, but also we've recently found records in New Mexico and in Sonora, Mexico, one record each. So the core of the range, as we know it today, is in Arizona. So that makes the species pretty unique in that most people in Arizona, I think if you ask them, wouldn't even know that we had fireflies. So it's a pretty cool species.

Meredith 2:57

And where in Arizona, like what kind of habitat are these in? Because when I think of fireflies, it's like. Lush meadows and forests, but that's not really what I think of when I think of Arizona personally.

Rachel Laura 3:11

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's. True of many people, but Arizona is actually pretty biodiverse. We go from below sea level to over 12,000 feet. And that includes four di different deserts that we have. But these species are found primarily in these witted areas like you're thinking so along streams in wetlands we call them SGAs down in Southern Arizona. So they do like those moist soils. That is primarily where we find them in Arizona.

Meredith 3:41

So are they riparian specialists? Is it need that moisture? Is there a plant species they're dependent on? I'm not really super familiar with like the ecology of fireflies.

Rachel Laura 3:53

So we don't know. I will say fireflies in general, like moist soils, they, they lay their eggs on moist soils typically. And they live most of their life as larvae. So a lot of people think fireflies are these cute, magical creatures, but the larvae are actually a bit terrifying. And they're, they're pretty voracious predators that feed on snails and slugs and earthworms and other soft bodied and verite much larger than themselves. So they spend most of their life in that form. They're only adults for. You know, two to four weeks per year. And the rest of that time they're primarily larvae. So they live as larvae hunting these things, you know, most the year, 11 months of the year. And then they this species in particular builds a pupil chamber out of soil. So it's like a little igloo that it makes with soil where it cates into an adult firefly. To emerge in the summer in order to breed.

Meredith 4:54

Okay, so cool. I, I mean, I guess that makes sense that there's, you know, these different life stages, but I never really, because I think of them as that full formed beetle, I never really thought about their larval stages. It kind of reminds me of like the dragonfly larvae we have up here. When you catch them and you're doing benthic, you need to get them out quick.'cause otherwise they eat all your other samples. So, sounds like maybe fireflies have a similar predatory larval stage

Rachel Laura 5:23

Yeah, they're hunters. For sure. Yeah.

Meredith 5:26

and this species is a little bit different. Our other episodes is because the reason you started studying. This Southwest spring Firefly is because there's a petition to get it listed a species at risk. what does that process look like? Why are people concerned about its population? Do we know what the threats are? I'd love to hear more about that kind of and how that came about.

Rachel Laura 5:57

Yeah, so it all, it all started when the Zer Sea Society for Invertebrate Conservation, which is a nonprofit devoted to protecting at-risk invertebrates and preventing their extinction. They assessed all of the North American fireflies under the IUCN Red List Assessment, and they found that over half of the fireflies in North America were data deficient. So most of them, we don't even know enough. To assess them as to their risk of extinction. This species, they assessed it and even though there's barely anything known about it, they were able to assess the species and determine that it was vulnerable to extinction. And they then worked with the New Mexico bio park to petition the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list this species under the US Endangered Species Act. So, the official wildlife service then reviewed the petition and determined that there was enough information that indicated that listing may be warranted. So the next step in the process is to do a full, they call it a 12 month finding. So they really dive into the species and try to determine, what the threats are and what the risk of extinction is now and into the future. And that's when I started studying the species. Because at that time there were, this was 2023, so not that long ago. There were 26 occurrence records and there was only one paper on this species, and that was from when it was described in 1982. We don't know a lot about it, and that piqued my interest a little bit. I think in natural resources, you don't often get the opportunity to study an interesting species like this where nothing is known. A lot of things have been, you know, really well studied and this is not one of those. So, I began trying to collect information that could be used to help inform that decision of whether or not the species needs to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. So collecting information on what is the ecology you talked about, like is there a specific plant we don't know. We don't know for this species what it needs. That's. Some of what I'm trying to learn with my research is are there specific levels of soil moisture that are important? Are there specific soil types that are important? Is there, you know, some vegetation structure that's important? Distance to water, like all of these things I'm trying to figure out. What makes these habitats suitable for the species? And then also how far can this thing disperse? You know, like, are these populations completely isolated from one another or is there some genetic exchange between them? So some of the threats that we think may be affecting the species are things like, and that are known to be affecting other fireplace are things like. Pesticide used habitat conversion, habitat loss. This one I mentioned it, it pupate in an igloo on the soil surface, so it's in this little soil, equally on the surface of the soil. So you would expect it to be, you know, susceptible to trampling at that time of year. So things like that, but we don't have a lot of hard data to back it up. It's all, you know, likely threats at this point.

Meredith 9:23

That sounds like you said, a really exciting thing to get to be on the forefront of. know, learning about a species, but it also seems like kind of overwhelming, like where do you even Like is it okay, let's find out they are. Like what does your research actually look like? Is it a lot of field work? Is it a little lot of desktop? Like, can you take me through a little bit more of like what your day to day kind of looks like?

Rachel Laura 9:54

So last summer was my first field season, and it was. Kind of an exploratory pilot season. So I went to a few different sites last summer and I surveyed every week for nine weeks, primarily at one site. But I also checked several other sites. And so I surveyed, I. Specific points on these preserves. They're like Nature preserves, primarily owned by the Nature Conservancy. And so I went every, every week and I, I based my timing off of the known. State ranges that we had observations. So I tried to go out before the earliest record and after the latest record to try to get the full season, which I actually got really lucky and did so my first week there were no fireflies and they showed up the second week and my last week there were no fireflies. So I got the whole season. Fireflies and the site that I surveyed the most actually has two species of flashing firefly. I can get into the different life history strategies of fireflies, but only one of three life history strategies involve an adult that flies around and flashes where both the male and female look like adult beetles. There's some other really weird stuff that they do. So there was another species there too called the Southwest synchronous firefly. They, I suspected that they overlapped there because we had one record each at this preserve and so I was able to document them as well and how they overlap with the species temporally and spatially and a bit. You know how they're like niche partitioning a bit. So some are, you know, out earlier and some are out later in the night and some are in the grasslands and some are in the riparian area. And so it was really neat to see that kind of niche partitioning in action. But mostly my research has been trying to test some field strategies. So, so we don't have really good ways to survey for Firefly that account for. Imperfect detection. So whatever, you go out in the field and you're counting something, whether it's an animal or a plant or whatever, you know, you're not seeing everyone, you know, you're not seeing all of the, all of the individuals that are out there. And so when you're only counting. You're only getting a relative estimate of abundance. It's, it's not a true estimate because you're not accounting for those individuals that you missed. And how that detection might vary with sites, between sites, you know, based on, you know, the thickness of the vegetation or the time of day or the temperature or whatever. So by not accounting for all of that. You're, you're not getting a really good estimate of the population side. So one of the things that I did last summer was to try to do distance sampling with this particular firefly to see if that, that was a way to estimate pop estimate the absolute abundance. So like come up with a really good estimate while like counting for that imperfect detection. And that's a method that's mostly used for birds and. It's kind of a crazy idea because you have to measure the distance to each firefly that you see. Which one, when my, one of my committee members first proposed that I, I thought it was an insane idea because how are you gonna measure a distance to a firefly? But I found these night vision range finders, and because the species occurs in such low densities and usually like fairly low to the ground, or at least within. Vegetation that you can measure too, because range factors use a laser, you know, so you have to hit something with the laser to measure. So. I would measure vegetation adjacent to where I saw the firefly. And so using that, you can adjust for that imperfect detection because you know that your detection is dropping off with distance. So it was, last summer was kind of a, a test to see if that would work. And it, it did, it did work somehow. And also to learn a little bit more about the habitat use. So the preserve that I surveyed the most has. A creek and also a Seneca. So also a wetland area where there's just like a spring. And we didn't know, you know, is this Firefly gonna be in the spring because that's wedded year round, you know, moist soils or is it gonna be along the creek? And at this particular site, it was primarily along the creek. So that was really good information and that's kind of helping me tweak. My study for this next summer, which is gonna get more at the fine scale. So I'm gonna go back to that same site and survey like a hundred points and try to get at, you know, at which points do we have the most fireflies and what are the habitat features like in those areas. And try to correlate that with the abundance of fireflies to get more of the fine scale of habitat use.

Meredith 14:54

That sounds very intensive, but very, very interesting and so many things that I wanna jump back into, especially, know, how you identify between different species and all of that. But before we go that direction. You said it's low abundance, but How many are you seeing at these sites? Are we, is it that like for insects like hundreds, is it tens? Like how often or how many are we actually seeing of these species?

Rachel Laura 15:25

So I surveyed from points, so I would stand in one spot and count. And the most that I would see from a one single point would be about 10. So it's hard to say how many were on. The whole site without, you know, running all the models and getting more data. But I think the most that I've heard of anybody that has worked with the species thing in one place is around 150 total. So there's not a ton compared to the southwest synchronous firefly, which is thousands.

Meredith 15:56

And actually maybe that's a great segue. How do you tell these species? Apart, how do you, ID especially from a distance, Firefly is which?

Rachel Laura 16:08

Yeah, so fireflies are really cool because they have distinctive flash patterns. So there are some species of firefly that if they're dead and you just have a specimen, you can't even tell what species it is. You have to see the flash pattern. So these two species are pretty distinctive when you see them flying. I mean in hand, they're distinctive also. But the southwest, synchronous firefly has three quick flashes and then a long pause with no flashing. And the southwest spring Firefly has a single flash that it kind of streaks a little bit, like, almost like a little tiny j or a check mark. And so, and it's pretty consistent, like flash, flash, flash. So they're really easy to track, which makes'em nice for, for my work. But they're actually really easy to, to tell apart. Because of that, you can easily watch their flash pattern and as long as you see more than one flash, you can tell them apart.

Meredith 17:01

And this is so lame, but most of my honestly, Firefly knowledge comes from a fictional book where the craw dead sing. I don't know if people have recommended this to you, but you know, there's a concept of other species imitating flash patterns to draw male males of other species in and. Eat them. Like is it just females that flash? Do males and females have different flash patterns? Like I'm so

Rachel Laura 17:30

Yeah, so most of the ones that are flying around and flashing are the males and the females are primarily on the ground, and they have a flash response to the male. For them to come down and mate with them. But it's not typically the same flash pattern as the males. But there are some species where they, the female mimics the response of another species female. So the male of another species comes down to mate with her and then she eats it. But most adult fireflies don't eat. But there are, so the genus of the southwest spring fireflies by and. South of spring. Firely is the only member of that genus in the United States or Canada. They're primarily in Central and South America and there are some members of that genus that do have predatory adult females that eat other species males which is pretty cool. So it could be something that's happening and we just haven't documented it yet with this one. But it is known from the genus. Yeah.

Meredith 18:30

And maybe we don't know this yet. Do we know things that they're eating as adults? Like is it mostly vegetation or are they stocking up all their buddy mass as larvae and they just mating as adults? I.

Rachel Laura 18:46

That's what most fireflies do, so most of them just eat. Larva and then don't feed as adults. But there have been records of adult fireflies nectar on plant, on flowers and eating all kinds of things. Not this species in particular, but other species have been documented eating like fruit and all sorts of different invertebrate. This species, we only have two records of it. Larva even eating anything. And both times it was a snail. So we don't really know if the adults feed, we don't know what the larvas eating. It's lar far larva are pretty understudied as a whole.

Meredith 19:25

I was actually gonna ask Will, I mean, you have so many questions to answer. Will any of them be directed at larva? Are they harder to study?'cause they're underground? Are they easier to study because they can't fly?

Rachel Laura 19:40

I think they're harder, they're harder to find. They're not always available. They're, you know, they're hiding under the leaf litter or in the soil. I've never seen a larva of this species. I've only seen the adults. I haven't spent a ton of time digging around for them. I. But the adults are easy, right? They go in the dark. So that makes'em pretty easy to study which is why I chose that life stage to, to investigate. But I, I have some questions about the larva. I don't know if I'm gonna get to it'cause I I have so many other questions as well. So we'll see.

Meredith 20:12

Fair enough. Is there anything else that you think is like fascinating about their life cycle or things that you like wish people knew about fireflies?

Rachel Laura 20:22

Well, I think in Arizona in particular, most people that live here, if you ask them, they, they won't even think we have fireflies. So just raising awareness that there are these really cool species in the Southwest that are really understudied and fascinating because they're so rare that when you do see them, it's pretty special.

Meredith 20:46

And I guess if people were aware, they. All of a sudden people are like, okay, it's now listed. I mean, in a magical world. Now everybody knows that Arizona has these fireflies. Why should people care about the future of fireflies?

Rachel Laura 21:05

Yeah. For me, I think of the. Just the magic of fireflies. You know, I, I don't know anybody that has a negative opinion of fireflies and doesn't get really giddy and excited when they see them. Especially in a place where most people have never seen a firefly that grew up here in Arizona. It's not like a normal thing for kids to go collect them in jars, like in other places in North America like it is. Pretty rare. I didn't see a firefly until I was 25 and I was really excited and there was three of them. So I think just to be able to preserve that magic for people to see in the future. Like last summer, I took over 40 different volunteers out, and for a lot of them they had never seen a firefly. If they had, it wasn't in Arizona, so nearly no one that I took out had ever seen a firefly in Arizona before and they were so excited. Just to be able to preserve that magic for future generations to enjoy. Like I think that's why we need to, you know, work to save the species.

Meredith 22:16

That is,

Rachel Laura 22:17

I.

Meredith 22:17

so awesome that you got to take so many people out to see their first Arizona firefly. That is also a little bit of of magic, and I totally agree. There's something about fireflies, maybe it's the time of night or the ambiance, but it really does spark your curiosity and make you kind of look at the world a a little bit differently

Rachel Laura 22:39

Yeah, I call them gateway bugs. So like they are a great way to get people interested in insects. And right now I think that's really important because insects as a whole are not doing very well. So whatever we can do to, you know, increase people's interest and just get people to pay attention to insects, I think is for the best.

Meredith 23:05

And for people who are listening, maybe in Arizona, maybe not in Arizona, what can people do other than spread awareness about fireflies? What can they do to help our insect populations or help the Southwest spring Firefly?

Rachel Laura 23:24

So insects as a whole, I think. Leaving habitat intact. You know, if you have a yard, have it be a wild yard. You know, don't rake up your leaves. Don't have a a lawn. Have native flowers and other plants for insects to live in. Don't use pesticides around your house. Don't leave lights on outside if you don't need them. Like light pollution is another threat to a lot of nocturnal animals and insects. And I mentioned that over half of North American fireflies are data deficient. So the Zer Society has a community science program called the Firefly Atlas, and that allows anyone that's interested to go out somewhere near them and look for fireflies and do a firefly survey and help to collect more data on these fireflies. And there, there are so many there. There's probably several species that we just haven't even identified yet. So we need all the people we can get like crowdsourcing, firefly surveys to get us the data that we need to learn more about these species. So anyone that's interested can go on their website. I think it's firefly atlas.org. They have maps of where fireflies have been seen. They have trainings, they have survey data sheets and they have a portal where you can submit your data to them and they'll have local experts verify species ID from a photo. You don't have to collect the insect. You can just catch it, take some pictures of it. Submit those photos. And experts can help you identify them to species. So it's kind of a cool way to get people outside and looking at bugs and, you know getting their, getting their hands dirty. So that would be my number one recommendation.

Meredith 25:07

well, I love to hear that there's expert help because I do find insects a little intimidating even when I'm trying to start with just like you know, quote unquote species like dragonflies or, or bumblebees that can be a little bit more distinctive. And then I start looking at the Beatle section and you're like, there's so many. So that's awesome that there's support for that too. And going back to you saying that, Arizona is very biodiverse. It actually has a lot of different types of habitat when you're protecting, like, let's, in an ideal, maybe in an ideal world, I don't know, is it an ideal world that it gets listed or ideal world that we find out that it's not actually threatened?

Rachel Laura 25:52

Yeah, I mean, I think the hope would be that it doesn't need protecting because it's doing really well and maybe we just haven't been looking. That's probably best case scenario. I.

Meredith 26:01

be good. if it goes the other way and, you know, their habitat becomes protected. What other species might benefit from the protection of the, the firefly or maybe increased awareness of these different types of habitats.

Rachel Laura 26:20

So I mentioned these are mostly weed areas, which you can imagine in the Southwest are. Pretty rare and already extremely biodiverse. You know, you put water in these arid systems and you get a lot of interesting things following those streams and living in those wetlands. Also, because of our proximity to Mexico, we get a lot of really interesting species that are not really found anywhere else in the United States. So, you know, in these riparian areas, we have a lot of. Threaten and endangered birds and frogs and snakes and other insects that this would protect. I mentioned there's also the southwest spring firefly or the southwest synchronous firefly. And there is another species of firefly that I found at a couple sites too. This one has a different like history strategy, but it's also found in these repairing areas. So. These, these areas are hotspots of biodiversity in Arizona, and I think protecting them is gonna benefit innumerable other species.

Meredith 27:28

So really, really important that we figure out what's going on and and get as much protection for these areas as we can. And I know you're. the early stages of your research, you still have a couple of years of you know, left to, to do the study, but have you had any successes so far or maybe even the success was just proving that you can use the distance count, like anything that has come out that you're excited about?

Rachel Laura 27:58

So that was one was just identifying a new survey method and another that, well, there were a couple other really interesting finds. One was I, I mentioned that the southwest spring and the southwest synchronous fireflies overlap at the site that I surveyed every week. But I was able to find a new population of the southwest, synchronous firefly that hadn't been previously documented, which was like a pretty good range expansion for that species. So that was pretty exciting because nobody had ever documented that species there before. And the other interesting find was. I mentioned there's some other families of beetles that are Lumin, and one of those is F Gogh today, and they're called railroad worms and they are fascinating little creatures. And we found those every week out there on our survey. They light up when you touch them, like a predatory response, you know, anti predator response. So they look like, just like typical beetle larva that you would buy at like a pet food store to feed your lizard or something, you know, like a mealworm. But if you look at them in the dark, they have a light on the front that blows continuously, and that's how we would find them. And then if you touch'em, they have lights down each side that light up. And it looked really cool and it was. It was like being a little kid again. You know, when we found those, it was like this really fascinating thing that we had never seen before and we still dunno what species it was because you can't identify those by the larvae or the females also look like that only the males look like, like regular beetles, like you would expect. So yeah, we, we don't even know what species that was, but they were, they were everywhere out there and they were really cool to see.

Meredith 29:48

That sounds absolutely fascinating. Like I didn't even know something like that existed and it's like kind of hard for me to picture, but I'm definitely gonna be Googling it

Rachel Laura 30:01

Yeah, I can send you a, a video.

Meredith 30:04

Oh, please do.'cause I would love to share that too if I, if I can.

Rachel Laura 30:08

Yeah.

Meredith 30:09

And I mean, it sounds like you get out in the field a lot. We've already talked about how. You got to show people their first Arizona Firefly, these amazing railroad worms. Do you have any field stories or like favorite memory that can like top any of those?

Rachel Laura 30:30

I mean, I. The one that I remember the most is I mentioned I didn't see a firefly until I was 25. And you know, I was another person that didn't know we had fireflies in Arizona and I was out doing I was hiking with some friends of mine in the desert, in the Sonoran Desert, and there was a little creek and we were hiking after dark and there were some fireflies flying around. And my friends were both from the Midwest and. They didn't think anything of it. And I was so excited. I had to like ask them like, are these fireflies? And they're like, yeah, like what's the big deal? And that site, we still don't know what species that was that I saw there. We're still trying to get people to go out and look'cause it's not near where there are other known sites, you know, for the species or the southwest, synchronous firefly. So it could be another species. We have no idea. And just the memory of the shock of seeing those fireflies in a place that was that dry, you know, like getting into the hundreds Fahrenheit during the day. It was pretty amazing.

Meredith 31:38

That's very cool. And now you're studying Arizona fireflies. So like,

Rachel Laura 31:43

Yeah.

Meredith 31:43

I don't know if that's a full circle moment or if it sparked you in this direction, but Very cool.

Rachel Laura 31:48

Yeah, I don't know either. I think sometimes you get little nudges along the way that like push you in a direction you don't even realize you're, you're being pushed.

Meredith 31:58

Well, do you have some time for some rapid fire questions?

Rachel Laura 32:01

Sure.

Meredith 32:02

Amazing. what do you think is something underrated or overlooked? I. Either about, I guess the entire species is kind of overlooked, but maybe about fireflies in general.

Rachel Laura 32:16

Yeah, I think the most little known fact about fireflies is that they spend most of their life as larvae. You know, like I was saying, they, they spend 11 months of the year as a larvae primarily.

Meredith 32:31

Definitely didn't know that going into it. I think, everybody just thinks about like the flashing adults, so even knowing that there's like different patterns for them, I think what would be new and like you can, ID a species based on its pattern. It's almost like bird call or something.

Rachel Laura 32:49

Yeah. Yeah it is. And there's some new papers including on the two species I mentioned here that describe the flash pattern using some pretty cool technology. But yeah, it is just like bird calls.

Meredith 33:04

So are there any like myths about fireflies that you think should be dispelled?

Rachel Laura 33:10

I mean, I think fireflies have a really good reputation. You know, like I, I think everybody loves them, so I don't, I don't know if there's any, any myths, Yeah, I guess one thing, and it could go under either of those questions about I. You know, fireflies as a whole is not all fireflies glow. And that's something most people don't know. So I mentioned there's different like life history strategies that fireflies have. And one is, you know, they fly around and they flash and they have a flash pattern and they communicate that way. But there are these dark fireflies and. There's still fireflies that the adults no longer glow and they're active during the day and they use pheromones to find each other. So the, the larvae still glow the eggs and the larvae of all fireflies are bioluminescent, but the adults no longer have a lantern. And then there's a third strategy, which is probably the weirdest one to me, is the female. Doesn't fully morph out into an adult. She looks like a larvae still, and she glows on the ground and the males that don't glow fly around and look for her. So those ones, I think are the craziest looking of all the fireflies because the females just look like big larvae and they, they have their light on and the males just fly around and look for them and, and don't glow.

Meredith 34:39

Oh, that's so weird. I didn't know that the bioluminescence was in the larvae as well, and, and the eggs.

Rachel Laura 34:48

Yeah.

Meredith 34:49

Wow. Bizarre. If this species were to give a Ted talk to people, what do you think? The TED Talk would be called.

Rachel Laura 35:00

I think it would be something along the lines of, you know, water is life. So these things are so reliant on these wedded areas that have been subject to. You know, groundwater withdrawal and diver stream diversions and habitat alteration and overgrazing and wood cutting, and all of these things that have resulted in a huge loss of riparian areas in the United States and in Mexico. And I think they would talk about, you know, how critical these habitats are for so many species, not just fireflies, but everything in the southwest.

Meredith 35:41

Is that many species, including humans, like we're gonna run into water issues. So, you know, it's a little selfish, but like, yeah, water is life. Not just for fireflies, but, but for us too.

Rachel Laura 35:54

Yeah. Yeah. I think Arizona, that's becoming really obvious.

Meredith 35:58

Yeah, and maybe this question, I mean maybe it's so obvious, but like if fireflies were to have a superpower, what do you think their superpower would be?

Rachel Laura 36:10

I think it goes back to that, that magic, that like nature magic that they have and their ability to get people really excited and sort of, I. Give them that like childish joy about nature again, I feel like a lot of us lose that over the years and I think everybody that I took out this summer had a little tape of that where they were just so excited to see these things glowing in the dark in Arizona of all places that it just got everyone excited, you know, and like renewed that like sense of passion for nature. I don't think there's many other insects that can do that.

Meredith 36:56

yeah, and that's something we desperately need right now. So we could definitely use a superhero that, you know, provides connection to nature for people. And then what you do is not exactly your normal career day. Kind of job. Have you gotten any weird or funny reactions when you tell people what you do for work?

Rachel Laura 37:20

I get a lot of weird looks when I tell people I study fireflies in Arizona. I think the weirdest reaction I had was from an older gentleman that clearly had spent, I. His life in Arizona and proceeded to argue with me that there were no fireflies in Arizona, despite the fact that I had just been doing surveys for them all summer. He was unconvinced that, that we had fireflies here, which I thought was pretty funny.

Meredith 37:46

That is very funny. like, that's just such confidence be like, you're telling me you do research, but I think, I know, I think I know

Rachel Laura 37:53

Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty funny.

Meredith 37:56

So last question, maybe we over already covered it, but was there an aha moment for you when you knew you wanted to dedicate your life to research or to saving species?

Rachel Laura 38:08

Yeah, I, I took like a very circuitous path and was. A year or two into college before I decided to change my major after meeting a wildlife biologist, I, I hadn't really known wildlife biology was a job. If I had, I definitely would've done it because, you know, who doesn't wanna get paid to go look at things outside and hike and camp? And was that so I started doing that in college and then. A lot of people in the wildlife field are really into like a specific hackathon, you know, like really into birds or really into fish or whatever it is, and I was never. You know that into any one thing. And I couldn't figure out like, what is, what is my thing that I need to, like, what is my passion? And it wasn't until I took several different internships in college that I looked back and was like, what did these all have in common? And all of the jobs that I loved. We're dealing with at-risk species. So like that was my passion. Like my passion was trying to prevent species from going extinct and you know, save species so that other people have the opportunity to see them. And that's when I realized like that was gonna be my life's work, was, was trying to, you know, prevent these extinctions.

Meredith 39:31

It's so important to to try things because. know, even in theory sometimes you're like, oh, this is what I wanna do, and then in practice you're like, oh, it doesn't actually line up either with expectations or you know, maybe it's a not a personality fit. So I think that's very insightful that you were able to like go back and look at your internships and be like, this is the piece. And I think. That's almost even better than being like, I just know this is my passion and I'm gonna follow it. It's like that you figured it out through experience. I think that's an underrated story. We don't hear enough.

Rachel Laura 40:08

Yeah. Yeah. I definitely learned by doing, and I think there's a lot of people up. There that would probably benefit from trying a lot of different things and just seeing what, what they're most interested in.

Meredith 40:19

Amazing. Well, Rachel, thank you so much for. Your time and for chatting with us, please update us on your research and whether this ends up on the endangered species list or, or not, we'd be, we'd love to hear an update when you're, when you're done, your work.

Rachel Laura 40:36

Yeah. I'd love to.

Meredith 40:37

And that's a wrap on this episode featuring the southwest Spring Firefly. And Rachel. Laura, a huge thank you to Rachel for sharing her passion and knowledge. I learned so much about the Southwest Spring Firefly fireflies in general, and even Arizona. I think my favorite fun fact from the episode has to be that fireflies have glowing eggs and larvae, but that some of the adults don't glow. And then bonus fun fact is that sometimes you can't even tell which. Species is which without seeing their flash pattern, even when you have them in their hand. What a cool and diverse group of species. You definitely get bonus listener points if you find a way to work either of those fun facts into conversation. Before the next episode drops, I'll also be looking for the opportunity to drop the word senga into conversation. So for our jargon buster, this week, Cienegas are spring fed wetlands that are common in warm deserts of Western North America, including Arizona. They're characterized by their dependency on groundwater flow and their sensitivity to groundwater level changes. I hope you learn something new from this episode. And if you enjoyed today's show, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. It helps rarefied reach even more people who care about protecting our planet's rare species. You can follow us on Instagram at rarefied dot pod and sign up for our newsletter on our website to find out what's coming next. Until next time, get outside and explore the wild, because every species has a story and every one of us can make a difference. I'm your host Meredith Maker. Thanks for listening and happy trails.