An Interview with the Past, Present, and Future of the Atlanta Firefly Project

Written by A. Srivastava

This past Tuesday we got a chance to sit down with a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Daniel Suh is studying the ecology of infectious diseases, is the treasurer of EcoReach, and is spearheading the partnership between EcoReach and the Atlanta Firefly Project. Though Kelly Ridenhour, who founded the project while developing her master’s thesis, is now graduated, she still wants the project to be able to continue working and collecting data and thinks EcoReach is the best for its continuation.

Dan got a chance to explain what the Atlanta Firefly Project is and the benefits it can have for researchers, community members, and firefly species. He describes it as “a community science initiative for us to learn about how to best conserve different firefly species, primarily the Big Dipper firefly.” This project connects biologists with community members to help us collect data that would otherwise not be feasible for biologists to collect on their own. As many readers may already know, the Atlanta Firefly Project is a great way for community members to be involved in the scientific process.

“I think the most exciting thing about the Atlanta Firefly Project really is the ability for just a lot of people to connect…and learn more,” Dan told us. “A lot of people, especially here in the South, are very familiar with the fireflies that come out in the summer…I think it’s cool to really make the bridge between what happens in the scientific world and what happens in the rest of the world.”

Dan describes really well why a lot of volunteers for the project choose to help one summer and even come back for the next. Many have a personal connection with fireflies, either from building memories of catching and watching them as children or from seeing them for the first time as adults. People want to make sure these creatures stick around despite the growing environmental challenges they face.

Now that EcoReach is getting involved, what does that mean for the future of the project? 

“EcoReach taking [the Atlanta Firefly Project] on allows us to continue this project on for further years,” Dan told us, “We can add more summers of data collection for however long as we can…this helps us create very long data sets, something that is very valuable to ecological research.” Long-term datasets are difficult to collect as they may take multiple years to build. However, they are necessary for further research and in-depth understanding of a particular topic of interest.

EcoReach taking a leading role in the Atlanta Firefly Project is a way to connect with more citizen scientists than ever before. Despite starting in the Atlanta area, EcoReach is spreading the project out further into the Athens region and beyond.

But once the research and data are collected, what will it be used for?

“Using [data on how people manage their land] you can think about of, maybe these are certain factors that relate to kind of whether or not we see fireflies in this area, and it can give us a better idea of how we can better try to conserve and manage our property, our land to try to improve the lives of the fireflies in a way,” Dan explains. It takes more than just counting fireflies. It takes data on how certain land management practices like mowing and insecticide use can be attributed to changes in the natural firefly population in a certain area. We can then apply what we learn from this data to make recommendations for conservation practices to support our firefly communities.

“The hope is also that if we are collecting this data year after year there may be other graduate students who have other ideas of things they want to do with these data,” Dan says. Research about a certain topic often needs to be taken over multiple time periods to gain a better understanding of all of the dynamics at play. This is extremely important for future research since looking at figures over multiple years gives us a lot more information about consistent patterns or changing factors that affect the environment. Check out last week’s blog post, which dives into a graph that compares the effects of both short- and long-term land management practices.

A project of this scale, one that incorporates the connected science and community space, can face many challenges.

“This type of project is kind of this balance between quantity and quality and so we want to work with as many people as we can to get a large volume of data…[and] we want to make sure that the data that is being collected is of a high quality.” The Atlanta Firefly Project is designed as a straightforward monitoring survey to make it the most accessible to a wide audience. It requires no specialized tools or equipment and can be completed effectively by a wide range of individuals of different ages and backgrounds. Asking volunteers to do more than they are comfortable with can negatively affect the data, so it is important to provide high-quality training materials. We hope to continue to refine our training materials and educational resources to better support our community science volunteers.

With all that being said, how does the Atlanta Firefly Project fit in with the mission of EcoReach?

“EcoReach’s big mission is to really bring ecological and environmental education into our community,” Dan says, “The Atlanta Firefly Project is one way to give people an opportunity to get involved with the research that is going on at the Odum School of Ecology.” Community members can get the chance to be involved in exploring environmental issues that face their community and protect the species and environments that they’re passionate about. The observations people have in their own backyard can be more important than they know.

“We’re hoping that as this community continues to grow, we can plan some other ways to get people involved, ” says Dan. If you’d like to know more about the Atlanta Firefly Project, you can visit the Get Involved page as well as our Instagram @atlantafireflyproject

You can also visit the EcoReach website: https://ecoreach.ecology.uga.edu/