New Species of Firefly Discovered

In Delaware

Fireflies, the neon signs of the insect world, literally flash with a pulse of bioluminescence.

And yet, for the hundreds of years that scientists have been finding and identifying all manner of living things in a taxonomic directory of the natural world, one tiny firefly has escaped detection.

That is, until Delaware State University associate professor Christopher Heckscher went to a boggy peat forest at the Nanticoke Wildlife Area near Seaford.