India, April 26 -- Fear the dark less, love the night more. One way is to gaze at the stars and simultaneously absorb the synchronous display of fireflies (jugnoos) wafting around you. About 2,200 species of fireflies have been scientifically assessed across the Earth. These drifting embers across time and space have been described by Cate Hibbitt as an "accessible biological magic: jewels of light glinting in summer evenings throughout the world".

Bengali literature gave us a poetic image: "A boat on a dark night finding its way by the firefly's glow". A lonely Englishman, HA Severn, offered Western biological sciences the first description of Indian fireflies. Writing from Wayanad (Kerala) in the June 23, 1881, issue of Nature, Severn ...