My glowworm story | How I became obsessed with lampyrids | Origin story: The glowworms and me...
Channel: Peppers 'n' Glowworms
Date: 16/01/2021

It is the year 2021. The 22nd generation of my Sardinian glowworms is hatching right now. Sounds kinda weird, right?
How came that all to be?
In this video I try to explain my obsession with fireflies and glowworms.
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Origin story
The glowworms and me

In the year 2004 I partook in a field trip to the island Sardinia (Italy). I was already a huge lampyrid nerd, although I personally had met any of them only in two places so far. 
Once, as a child, during a vacation in Turkey in the summer of 1988. That was my first contact, so to speak.
In 1996 I stumbled upon the first specimen in my home country of Germany. It was a rainy September night and only a weakly glowing larva, but I was blown away by the fact that they live here as well!
I did some digging and collected all information I could get my hands on. I became an obsessed Fireflyer, basically, and started a collection of German sightings as a school science project.
A few years later I was studying biology and that field trip to Sardinia came close. I was fairly excited, because there are multiple species of lampyrid occuring, even one that has been found only on that island, Lampyris sardiniae. 

After all that build-up, can you imagine how I felt, when I first spotted a Sardinian glowworm while searching through some leaf litter? 
That moment is burned into my memory. It was a well fed larva with lovely magenta coloration on the sides. I showed it to my professor and he was like: "Yes, this could very well be the larva of a lampyrid, what makes you so sure?" 
I smiled. My reply: "It glows..."

Indeed, it was so well fed, that it showed the behaviour of disturbance induced glowing, likely to advertise poor taste and toxicity to would-be predators in lieu of trying to escape by crawling away with said "well fed" body.
Later during the field trip there were even larvae walking right across our path in different areas of Sardinia. In spring, larvae of certain species start walking about during the day. This might assist dispersal just before pupation.

I collected a few larvae and they traveled with me across Sardinia, carefully shielded from the heat of the day in a thermobox. Some small snails were also collected and given as food.

It has been my dream to breed fireflies since that rainy September night in 1996, so this was what I tried back home. It turned out, that there was only one male among the nine specimens.
But they reproduced and this male became the sire of my colony of Sardinian glowworms, which I could indeed verify as belonging to the species Lampyris sardiniae. 

Now in 2021, offspring of the 22nd generation are still with me and I have been able to share some of these amazing animals for projects of art, education, and science without the need to take further individuals from the wild.

These Sardinian glowworms have been and continue to be a constant part of my every day life since 2004 and I am very grateful for that.
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