But first, a classic symbol of a Kentucky summer night is the firefly or lightning bug.

For generations, catching these earthbound stars in a jar, like I did when I was a kid, has been a rite of passage.

But beneath the nostalgic beauty of their glowing light show lies a critical scientific story.

Researchers have discovered how these tiny insects serve as a vital warning sign for the health of our ecosystems and the things we can do in our own backyards to ensure their silent fireworks never go dark.

[music playing] [cricket chirping] If you go outside on a summer night and look up at the starry sky, you'll see something there that's unreachable and unfathomable but beautiful.

Fireflies bring that light down to earth where we can mingle with it.

[cricket chirping] So, a firefly is a little bit confusing with its name.

It's fireflies, aren't flies, lightning bugs, aren't true bugs but they are bioluminescent beetles.

[music playing] Our state offers a lot of diversity in the landscape here, but more importantly we have a lot of river and stream frontage and that's essential for fireflies or lightning bugs because they love moisture.

Some like to be up high in the pine trees, some like to be in cattails along the water's edge.

So, all of those wet kind of riparian areas that we have in Kentucky are going to be a nice little home for them.

[music playing] Fireflies are famous for their mesmerizing light display, but that's just the last couple weeks of their life cycle.

They spend most of their lifetime as larval and a lot of that time is just eating and they eat and they eat a lot.

They eat a lot of snails, they eat a lot of slugs.

They're predatory.

They have a distinct appearance.

They look kind of like an armor-plated grub or worm and they crawl along on the ground because they don't have wings and they're looking for these things to attack.

If you're a slug or a snail, a firefly larva is the last thing you want to see coming at you.

[music playing] When we talk about fireflies as adults, they're usually Black or dark brown in color and then on the thorax it goes over the head and the thorax shield is going to be kind of a mixture of red and yellow colors.

The other thing that they all have is a lantern or most of them as an adult will have a lantern on the rear of their abdomen that helps them to emit the flash that they're most famous for.

[music playing] A firefly's flash is like a songbird's mating call Each species has a male's signature flash pattern that their female counterparts recognize.

It's just a luminous version of Marco Polo like you would play in the pool in summertime.

It's just blink, blink, “I'm over here.” It's a blink, blink, “I see you.

Let's get together.” [laughs] To most of us, a lightning bug is just a lightning bug, but look closer.

Kentucky's diverse landscape is actually home to over 30 distinct species.

From our common backyard big dippers to the canopy dwelling candle fireflies that flicker like lanterns in the treetops.

But deep within forests, you'll find the rarest of them all, the blue ghost.

A tiny unblinking spirit that doesn't flash, it glows.

Blue ghosts are a very famous and infamous and interesting.

They don't have the patterns like we see with the other more common firefly species.

The males, in this case, they create a kind of eerie blue glow.

Some people say it's more green.

It just depends on how you perceive color, exactly what you're going to see from it.

It'll hover about a foot or two off the forest floor and just trail up the forest in the underbrush, emitting that faint glow and leaving that pale light behind it.

The female blue ghost, as opposed to the male, is going to be sitting down and she's going to be emitting her flashes to try and draw him in rather than going out and pursuing him like he's pursuing her.

The big dipper or the common eastern firefly is probably the most recognizable firefly that people will get to know here in Kentucky.

It's the ones that fly low and slow over your suburban backyard.

They're easy to catch and put in a jar.

And they make a very lazy J as they fly around.

They will get a little more elongated the further they get into their sequence, but that's the male flying through the air trying to signal to females down below.

Lightning bugs have an entire language written in light.

[cricket chirping] So, fireflies are one of our more charismatic insects.

People really care about them.

They love them and it does boil down to that nostalgia factor.

If you think about when fireflies come out, it's often right around the same time that people are getting out of school.

They're a harbinger of summer.

[music playing] We prowl around in the darkness with red light lanterns to help our dark-adapted eyes see better these faint glowing animals in the underbrush.

Getting to meet them up close is really a fascinating experience.

And then you explain to them that that's actually just one species of fireflies and there's a whole lot of other ones and then we're just now learning more about them and that's what research is all about is learning as much as possible about each different species so that we can protect them so that everybody can enjoy them.

I have moments when I'm out in the woods and the blue ghosts are flying through and I'm just stopped and I feel like a little kid.

[music playing] Fireflies are typically seen as a canary in the coal mine for ecosystem health.

All insects are faced with habitat loss and habitat destruction.

There's also the increased use of insecticides and other pesticide but with fireflies there's an added wrinkle of light pollution.

When they're trying to communicate with each other, if the glow isn't traveling far enough then unfortunately the males aren't talking to the females and the females aren't being able to respond to the males.

[cricket chirping] Right now, tonight if you wanted to go out and help fireflies in a way you could turn off outdoor lighting or over a longer period of time you could add motion sensors to outdoor lighting.

Anything you can do to limit the exposure of artificial light in your personal little ecosystem will help fireflies thrive.

In addition to that you can let your grass grow a little tall.

Fireflies need that tall grass to when they're larvae to hunt and find food when they're adults, they need those vantage points to find mates.

Even if you simply let a part of your yard grow wild, you'll notice a difference and the fireflies will show up and thank you.

[cricket chirping] One of the more interesting things that you can do is leave leaf litter as well.

It gives firefly larvae a place to safely overwinter in your yard.

They can stay nice and cozy in that leaf litter.

They spend about two years as a larva so they need that habitat to be able to find the earthworms and snails that they want to eat.

And come summertime when those leaves have decomposed, you'll have brand new fireflies coming up to light up your summer.

[laughs] We want these fireflies to be around if we want to enjoy their beauty and their splendor.

If you want your kids and grandkids in the future to enjoy them these natural fireworks glowing around us those are the kinds of choices that we have to make and the things that we have to be willing to do.

[cricket chirping]