Ga University, Taleigao campus favours beautiful bioluminescent creatures of night
We hate wild vegetation and love manicured lawns, but it is the same wild vegetation which supports these fireflies. We must oppose any pesticide sprays on our campus. I am observing campus fireflies since 2001 May. This year these creatures appeared 10 days late, i.e. on May 31. Their season is from May to early November. But their overall number has decreased as campus illumination has increased. Until this year I had no information of their identity. Two species of fireflies Photinus and Photuris were identified in Goa University campus. I captured the Photuris species after the rains on May 31, 2010, night and Photinus on June 30, 2010, night. I am posting this information to Firefly watch, Museum of science, Boston. I work as a volunteer under their programme and report status of fireflies in our campus. Do visit this beautiful website https://www.mos.org/fireflywatch/ Perhaps you too could join this initiative…. It is intriguing why there are no scientific studies on fireflies in Goa. So I have posted some images for would be researchers/biologists/entomologists The link is http://picasaweb.google.com/Nandkamat/BioluminescentCreaturesOfNightAtGoaUniversity# It has two images of glow from a bioluminescent caterpillar from our campus. BREAKING NEWS! An unique species of bioluminescent caterpillar discovered in Goa University campus! This segmented caterpillar is hardly 5 cms long but at night on rainy days produces a strong, intense and persistent yellowish green glow like a beam from a laser light. I collected and handed over one live specimen to Dr. I.K.Pai, dept. of Zoology for further investigation. Another specimen was spotted in front of Faculty block A at night. Fortunately I had a camera with me. It was good to capture one of these on Videoclip-perhaps the only available in world on such a phenomena. So enjoy probably the first videoclip on You Tube in the world, on tropical grassland based bioluminescent caterpillar, that too from an environment familiar to all of us. http://www.youtube.com/user/nandkamat#p/a/u/0/qlncKL140Os Nature is great and it never stops me amazing!. One life would not be sufficient even to study our own campus biodiversity, even one single wild species in depth. -- Dr. Nandkumar Kamat, GOA