FIREFLIES AND ROMANCE.

FIREFLIES AND ROMANCE. Fireflies evoke romance and past summer evenings. The Kevin Kline “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, with Rupert Everett as Oberon and Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania, ended with images of the fairies as fireflies as the lovers go off together. This article tells how each flash of light by a firefly is part of a courtship ritual. The fireflies flashing in the air are all male. Female fireflies stay on the ground and respond to the flashes of one of the males at the precise time interval for that species. Each species has a different pattern of flashes. (There are six different species in the field in eastern Massachusetts where the article is set). A female may respond to as many as ten males in an evening, but at the end of the evening, she mates with only one.