The sun set just a half hour ago as you casually sit in your backyard enjoying the summer skies and then look about at the flashes of light that pop above your lawn. Fireflies, aka lightning bugs, make their evening debut to provide you with a spectacular visual performance. Pennsylvania designated the firefly, Photuris pennsylvanica, as the official state insect in 1974.
A small, unremarkable beetle by day, fireflies can transform a midsummer night into a fairyland of tiny, brilliant twinkling lights — a true wonder of nature. There is a story about how this bug became our state insect. It began when elementary students in Upper Darby, Delaware County, saw an article about Maryland adopting a state insect.
Pennsylvania lacked a state insect at the time, so the students entered the firefly to be selected as the insect symbol to the General Assembly. On April 10, 1974, the firefly was formally adopted by the Pennsylvania General Assembly. Commonly called “lightning bug” in Pennsylvania, it produces light through an efficient chemical reaction using special organs, with very little heat given off as wasted energy.
Fireflies use species-specific flash patterns to attract members of the opposite sex (though not all firefly species are bio-luminescent as adults). These flashing signals range from a continuous glow to discrete single flashes to “flash-trains” that are composed of multi-pulsed flashes. In most North American fireflies (including Photuris pennsylvanica), th.
