Signature critters have become a hallmark of the Festival for the Eno June 30, 2005 Herald-Sun By JIM SHAMP © Copyright 2005 DURHAM -- It's not a fly or a bug, nor does it produce lightning. But the firefly flickering in Northeastern woods -- lightnin' bug to those in the South and Midwest -- is seen by most as a friendly beetle, a nostalgic denizen of warm summer nights. That's one of the key reasons the lightning bug was chosen this year as the signature critter for Durham's 26th annual Festival for the Eno, said Greg Bell, coordinator of the wide-ranging celebration of nature and nurture that runs Saturday through Monday. A different representative of the fauna found along the Eno is featured every year in logo art and on promotional posters. " We've always had a somewhat more closed system before, getting input from people we knew would know a lot about the critters found along the Eno," Bell said. But they broadened it this year and solicited the membership by e-mail. " And we got a wonderful list to choose from -- even including some imaginary species," he said. One suggestion, he said, was to honor a rotifer that lives only in the lobes of a tree-dwelling liverwort and that can only be seen with an electron microscope. That one didn't make the cut -- this year anyway. Festival organizers got some local botanists and naturalists to winnow a list of more than 100 ideas down to about 30. " They discussed the aesthetic attributes of each and came down to about a dozen, which we then offered to various artists, soliciting sketches," Bell said. The winner was the lightning bug, as interpreted by Jennifer Armstrong of Chapel Hill, a freelance natural science illustrator and designer who has done previous Eno Festival logos. " When we saw the firefly, our eyes lit up," Bell punned. "Our imagination took wing. We took a real shine to it. It got glowing reviews." Ba-da-boom. The lightning bug -- Photinus pyralis to its friends -- was preceded on the Eno pedestal by the crawdaddy, specifically the Carolina ladle crayfish. The great blue heron was the festival's first representative, in 1980. The Eno park has since been inhabited by flying insects such as the dragonfly and luna moth, warm fuzzies such as the red fox and American beaver, the scaled and slithery such as the Roanoke bass and mud puppy, and feathered finery such as the belted kingfisher and wild turkey. Though the mosquito attends each year, it hasn't yet been lionized, despite its importance in the foundation of the food chain for many of the aforementioned. This year, festival organizers also have added a representative of Eno flora to the flock, as an "extra" logo species. " The smooth purple coneflower, an endangered species, is found only in certain remaining prairie communities," Bell said. "And we have a historic community right here in Penny's Bend, a bow in the river that's a state natural area -- a fire-maintained ecosystem." So the wildflower, too, appears on some Eno literature this year. The flower is a member of the echinacea family, one of the most threatened and symbolic of the rare, nearly unique species living in that loop of the river, Bell said. " Because of fire suppression and development, the smooth purple coneflower was greatly threatened. But there's a diabase sill of rock beneath the surface at Penny's Bend, so named because the river must bend around it. The soil there is very sweet, not acidic like other soil of the area. So it's host to a very different kind of plant and animal life than the rest of the area." But for lightning bug lovers, this is the year to see them -- on the Eno posters, anyway. N.C. State University extension specialist Steve Bambara, an entomologist, said he's been getting calls this year from people complaining they aren't seeing as many. " I haven't seen any shortage around my place," he said, "but people are asking me, 'Where are they?' And I'm not sure what to tell them. It's possible that people aren't seeing as many because we've changed the habitat. Pollution may contribute, and pesticides moving off target may be reducing them somewhat." Bambara joked that the problem might simply be that his fellow baby boomers can't stay up that late anymore, or that their memories are not what they used to be. " Maybe we caught so many as kids and left them in a jar to die overnight that they never recovered," he suggested. "Or maybe it's because their peak activity conflicts with 'Jeopardy!' " But any lightning bugs are better than what you'll find in, say, Colorado. " Most folks don't realize that there are none west of Kansas," said Bambara. "And here we took 'em for granted all this time." Lightning bugs tend to congregate near water sources and on the edges of wooded areas with good organic soils, the insect expert said. They like to feed on snails and slugs "and possibly a few other soft-bodied night creatures." They are said to be able to track snails down by their slime trail. The bugs find their mates using flashers in their tails. A chemical process involving Luciferin, ATP, Luciferase, pyrophosphate and a few other goodies flips the switch in the last abdominal segment of the lightning bug, producing a yellow-green glow about 1/40th as bright as a candle. In general, males fly around flashing about every five seconds at females who tend to hang out on grass or shrubs, blinking about twice as often. When she sees the light of a male with a future, she'll coordinate her blink with his until he zeroes in on the signal. But the ritual is different with each species. And in some cases, already-mated females of one species reportedly have lured unsuspecting males of another species from the sky, only to attack and eat them.