Firefly, oh so bright, how many in flight this night?
Finally, after a month, there it was, winking green in the back of the yard, near a hammock slung low between two thick trees - the season's first firefly.
Growing up in northeastern Ohio, Deb José saw fireflies all the time, but in the past 27 years living in the Boston area, she has not seen many at all. "It's sad," the Newton North High School science teacher said on the back porch of her Newton home Tuesday night, lightning flashing over the house to the north. "I expected my kids to grow up chasing fireflies, just like I did."
So this summer, Josand her 17-year-old daughter, Annie, signed up online for the Boston Museum of Science's Firefly Watch project.
The site gives families an opportunity to engage in science and affords researchers valuable data that may help them understand whether factors such as light pollution, development, climate change, and pesticides are affecting firefly populations.
More than 500 people from 24 states have joined the citizen science project since it began in mid-May. Volunteers track the number of fireflies in their backyards during firefly season - late-May to early-August - at least once a week and enter their findings into the project's website.
Don Salvatore, a science educator at the museum, initiated the project after hearing people who attended his insect programs saying they'd seen fewer fireflies in recent years. "Even though they're everyone's favorite insect," he said, "there's just very little known in the research community."
Salvatore met Adam South, a doctorate candidate at Tufts University who studies fireflies, and the two modeled their project after the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count. The Bird Count began in 1900 and has expanded to more than 55,000 participants, providing long-term population trend data for conservationists and researchers.
Similarly, South and Salvatore hope their project will give scientists data on where fireflies live, and inform South's research on firefly mating.
Standing in a wet field near the Old Town Hall Exchange in Lincoln, with a headlamp over a backward baseball cap, South described fireflies' complex relationships, and explained the significance of their flashes. He pointed out the predatory photuris, flying high and fast, triple-flashing rapidly; and the smaller pyrectomena, also triple-flashing, but staying low and slow, dipping down near the tall grass. Earlier in the evening, double-pulse photinus could be seen.
The flash patterns, which vary between genders and among species, also help the bugs attract mates.
"When you look at a field of fireflies, you're looking at a very well-evolved courtship," he said. "It's a perfect example of how evolution is working and how it has shaped something that's absolutely beautiful."
South visits the Lincoln site and two others every day during the summer, staying late into the night. He and two other researchers hope to use data from the project to learn more about how fireflies live and mate, and whether their populations are declining.
He doesn't expect the general public to be able to discern among species, he said. But he said he's perfectly willing, once more data come in, to make housecalls to sites with large firefly habitats to confirm the findings.
"Even if it turns out that I can't use the data," he said, "the fact that people are engaging in science with their families - that's great."
That may prove to be the most important aspect of the project, said James E. Lloyd, a retired professor from the University of Florida, who has been studying fireflies for more than 45 years and is widely considered the godfather of the field.
"The most important part of that is it's getting kids and families enthusiastic about this kind of science," he said. "We're so urbanized now; we really need to have an emphasis on natural history and recognizing that nature is pretty important."
If the Sharma family, of Sharon, is any indication, the project is working. Last Monday night, the Sharmas stood in their backyard, with the woods beyond, and waited for fireflies. Salvatore showed Tara, 10, a fishing rod he'd converted into a firefly lure - complete with a green LED at the tip. (Tara's father, Raj, a private wealth manager, is a Museum of Science's board member of overseers.)
The yard was silent except for the slap of Tara's flip-flops and the whir of the air conditioner, and as she blinked the light among the bushes, the bugs appeared, flashing back among the trees.
"That's really cool; they all come once you wink at them," she said. "It's just such a magical thing seeing them all!" 