They emit a bright blue-green light from both their head and their tail to attract food, usually insects like Alabama’s plentiful mosquitos.
Ĭlose cousins to the glowworms of New Zealand and Australia, dismalites live in the moist, moss-lined walls of the canyon, the ideal place for them to weave a sticky web to capture prey. The glowworms of Dismals Canyon aren’t really worms, but the larvae stage of a unique, native type of fungal gnat endemic to North America called Orfelia fultoni. But as climate change continues to affect bioluminescent organisms globally, the dismalites population may be living on borrowed time. The population of dismalites peaks twice a year when the larvae hatch-in late spring and early fall-giving a dazzling show of light, not unlike the fireflies that light up Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “You find a lot of people to this day who don’t know it exists.” “That location has been a popular local tourist attraction going back to the 1920s and ’30s, but it was privately owned, and still is, so it’s never been widely publicized,” says Gary Mullen, professor of entomology emeritus at Auburn University, who helped identify the genus of the dismalites. When the sun sets and night settles, tiny glowworms called dismalites shine bright with blue bioluminescence.ĭismals Canyon Natural Area is one of the few places in the United States where these centimeter-long glowworms thrive in impressive numbers, thanks to the unique micro-ecosystem of the area.īecause it is not a national or state park, this natural gem often slips under the radar of visitors-and even longtime residents of Alabama. But the real magic of this privately owned National Natural Landmark can’t be seen during the light of day.
The viridescent mossy glens and labyrinths of rock passageways at Dismals Canyon, in northern Alabama, could easily double for Middle Earth in J.R.R.
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