dbear

So hopeful for this! I'm a neuroscience Ph.D. student at Harvard and a longtime admirer of Wellesley, MA fireflies on early summer nights. (Also a career luciferase dependent.) I'm fascinated by how differences in animal behavior evolve, so in a perfect world I would love to know what genetic changes underlie different species' patterns of photoemission and receptivity. This may be a long way away, but sequencing a genome seems like a great first step -- allowing future comparative genomics and neurobiology between closely related species, or perhaps even quantitative trait mapping (I have no idea if it's possible to intercross different fireflies!) Best of luck, and I would love to hear about progress or read background on your research.