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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzLightning bugs!!
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    2 days ago

    Great Smoky Mountains National Park has a “Lightning Bug Lottery” every year, a certain number of passes are randomly given out to applicants to see the park at night during peak breeding season for fireflies. Supposedly they will all sync up their lights and converge in a huge group on one tree.

    I’ve seen a smaller event once in my hometown. Just a whole tree was sparkling for a few minutes. I think the most amazing thing about it is the light doesn’t really show up well on a camera, so you kinda have to just put your phone down and enjoy it with your eyes. The only place you can keep that moment is in your mind.


  • I feel a little bad for the pest control guy that showed up at my house last spring. I majored in Biology, but did not graduate, my partner has their Masters in Biology and wrote their thesis on ecological damage from heavy metals.

    Yeah, my yard looks a little unmanaged, sure, you can see bugs all over the milkweed, that’s intentional. My yard was visited by thousands of bees (and sadly) a dozen or so butterflies daily. Because we had the insects and native plants, we had lots of small birds, and becuase we had lots of small birds, we were lucky enough to have a local Cooper’s Hawk as a regular visitor nearly every day.

    The guy offered to do indoor services for spiders and termites. I told him I don’t have any of those because I have a bunch of basement centipedes. He said he could spray for those, and I was like “Why? They’re harmless and they’re the reason I don’t have dangerous spiders and termites in the house”.



  • Bytemeister@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzLightning bugs!!
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    2 days ago

    First one of the year is always a treat. Then I remember how many there were as a kid and it makes me sad.

    Please, switch to red outdoor lights if possible, and if you can’t do that, shade your outdoor lights so that it only illuminates specific areas. Fireflies are affected by light pollution.

    Also, don’t rake your leaves, or if you do have to take, try to sequester them in an area on your property, (I’m currently using my leaves as “sunkill” for garden and flower beds.) fireflies lay eggs on leaf litter, if you dispose of the leaves, you dispose of the eggs.






  • Nope. Evolution doesn’t really work like that. A ‘successful’ organism simply needs to have offspring capable of producing more offspring. In the case of a parasite, it just needs to keep the host alive long enough to infect another host. Anything more than that and you start running into quality vs quantity issues. A longer living, self limiting parasite isn’t going to reproduce as fast (as size longevity goes up, reproductive rates generally go down)

    A fast acting, highly transmissible parasite is generally going to outcompete slower parasites.




  • My brother has a model 3. It’s a nifty car. The advanced cruise control (not their FSD) is better than the Blue-Cruise in my Ford, and works on more roads. Build quality seems about the same TBH, although my brother may just have a good example. The Tesla charging network is expansive, and would be a major point to the Model 3, but other cars can charge there now, even older models can do it with an adapter.

    Ergonomics-wise, I think the Ford is much better. Better controls on the steering wheel, has a “gauge cluster” instead of putting important info on the center display away from the driver’s line of sight, and it’s easier to open the doors, both from the outside, inside, and in the case of emergencies.