Fireflies....How do they sync?

Recollecting those days of catching fireflies in dark. Especially, in forests they form a source of light for many.

Have you wondered an amazing property of them synchronizing with each other. The blink rate of Fireflies differ from region to region. South east Asian fireflies have this resemblance of synchronizing their flash lights.

Some characteristics

• They live for about two months only....How sad?..
• There are nearly 2,000 firefly species.
• Well, all of us know from where it got the name. But how do they produce light?
  Actually, they have a light organs below the abdomen. So, when they intake Oxygen, it reacts with luciferin inside special cells and hence, they are bioluminescent.
• The purpose behind synchronizing is to find their mates.

Facts

Scientists observed this phenomena and tried to learn - how do they do it?
After years of research, they came out with models and were able to solve the mystery.

Suppose, there are many machines each with a blinking LED and a light sensor. Eventually, their aim is to synchronize their flash lights.

At first, they start blinking randomly and then after sometime depending on nearby fireflies, they try to match with them by detecting the neighbour's light intensity.

Likewise, when all of them starts observing their neighbour's light patterns and try to match their frequency with them.
Thereafter, a time comes when all starts blinking at a time. Hence, they all are synchronized.

This is the manner the fireflies sync with each other.

A model

I myself built a hardware-model based on this. And I was able to achieve the results of synchronization of Fireflies within 15 seconds.
A better understanding may be possible through this diagram.


Pseudo Code -





So, these days this phenomena is being used in networking where synchronization is required.

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