Cindy Brooks, age 9, of Asheville, North Carolina, for her question:

What do fireflies eat?

About 50 different types of fireflies, glowworms and lightning bugs live in North America. All of them are classed as beetles, but naturally each variety has a somewhat different way of life. The beetle insects start life as eggs that hatch into grubs. The grubs spend a while as pupas and then hatch into grown up insects. Most of the grown ups have wings, and they fly around adding sparks to the evening air. Some have no wings. They are the glowworms that shine their lights in the grass.

A firefly does most of his feeding during his wormy larva stage of life. He hunts in rotting wood and among fallen leaves. And his favorite foods are small insects, plus other small scraps of meat. When the grubby larva becomes a winged grown up, he changes his diet. Some fireflies spend the daytime feeding on such foods as pollen, taker. from the flowers. And beetle experts think that certain adult fireflies do not eat any food at all.