The National Science Foundation has awarded a Collaborative Research at Undergraduate Institutions grant of $663,228 (DBI 0330897) to Fitchburg State College to support a project entitled:

"C-RUI: Exploring the Ecology of Flash Communication in Photinus Fireflies Through Collaborative Undergraduate Research with Computer-Simulated Signaling Behavior."

This project is under the direction of Christopher K. Cratsley and Howard H. Thomas in the Department of Biology and Chemistry, and Kevin B. Austin in the Department of Computer Science.  Paul Moosman is a postdoctoral associate working closely with Biology students.

This grant will allow undergraduate students in Biology and Computer Science to work with faculty members on a study to determine how fireflies use patterns of lantern flashes to influence potential mates and predators.

Biology students and faculty will design the experiments, and students and faculty in the Computer Science department will build and program instrumentation to carry out the experiments. This collaboration will produce new solutions to some of the traditional problems of studying animal communication and the results of these experiments will shed light on the unique communication system of fireflies.

The “virtual firefly” instruments—VFIs—will be capable of observing and analyzing a sequence of flashes from a firefly in real-time and producing a sequence of simulated firefly flashes in response. These instruments will be used to test how male and female fireflies engage in flash courtship behavior, how they use flashes to identify different species of fireflies, and how potential predators such as bats respond to these bioluminescent flashes.

By combining research on the Ecology of Firefly Signaling with Virtual Firefly Development this project prepares undergraduate students for careers and advanced study in the increasingly interdisciplinary fields of Biology and Computer Science.

For more information about the grant please use the links provided.

Funding for this project is provided by the Collaborative Research at Undergraduate Institutions (C-RUI) Program of the National Science Foundation (NSF).