Meeting Abstract
How do environmental parameters affect the geographic distribution of organisms? Many organisms need to have specific conditions (temperature, sunlight, precipitation, etc.) in order to survive, develop, and eventually reproduce. The overall goal of this research project attempts to investigate environmental factors (air and soil temperature) influencing the species distributions of fireflies. Fireflies are a very widely admired organism but are vastly understudied; more information about their evolution, communication (in lighted and unlighted species), and physiology is being discovered about this organism everyday which makes it an interesting and current area of research. With that being said, there are many aspects of these organisms that still need to be researched which is where this study comes in. Flash patterns and DNA barcoding were used to identify which firefly species were present at three local field sites from May to August of 2019; abundances were also observed. That data, in addition to minimum and maximum air temperatures, were used to create a degree-day (mGDD) model. The degree-day model was adapted so it can be used as a predictive model of the various local firefly species found in years to come. Soil temperature was not put in this model because minimum and maximum values were not obtained daily. Many of the mGDD values for the different species found in this study matched up to previous findings; the ones that did not could have been because of geographic differences or speciation. Fireflies can be bio-indicators of environmental health; knowing more about how temperature affects when and where they emerge will begin to illustrate what could happen to firefly populations in relation to the continuation of climate change.
