Author: Daniel Messih

“Lit up the world as I fell asleep,” and so on, spoken beautifully in “Fireflies” by Owl City. Soft bodied beetles of the family Lampyridae, frequently known as fireflies, are often cited as a prime example of bioluminescence. But how do they do it? The answer lies in their anatomies, in some impressive optical physics,…

Somewhere in southeastern North America, there is a carpenter ant currently, against its own will, biting on a twig so hard that it dies, remaining fixated in that position long after its death. The culprit is no other than Ophiocordyceps kimflemingiae (Ballesteros-Aguirre et. al, 2025). Once a spore is inside the body of an ant,…