Bioluminescence emissions of female fireflies of the species Luciola praeusta

Rabha, Mana Mohan; Sharma, Upamanyu; Goswami, Angana; Barua, Anurup Gohain

doi:10.1016/j.jphotobiol.2017.03.028

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…This is also in accordance with earlier in vivo and in vitro experiments showing that an increase in temperature shifts the λ max towards longer wavelengths, that is, towards the yellow colour (Hastings 1996;Rabha et al 2017). As with the colour of the glow-worm glow, firefly flash signalling patterns-which have a significant role in mate attraction and species recognition (Lewis and Cratsley 2008)-are also affected by temperature (Sharma et al 2016;Rabha et al 2017). Interestingly, despite the mean temperature being higher in 2018, the average λ max was significantly lower (just the opposite of what the temperature difference would have led us to expect).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

When night never falls: female sexual signalling in a nocturnal insect along a latitudinal gradient

Borshagovski

Saari

Lehtonen

et al. 2020

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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The environment can play an important role in animal communication by affecting signal transmission and detection. Variation in the signalling environment is expected to be especially pronounced in widely distributed species, potentially affecting how their signals are detected. Such environmental variability is presumably relevant for sedentary females of a nocturnal capital breeder, the European common glow-worm (Lampyris noctiluca), which produce green light during the night to attract flying males to mate. Being widely distributed in Europe, glow-worm populations are exposed to both rapidly descending, darker summer nights in the south, and slowly dimming, brighter summer nights further north, with the latter potentially posing challenges to the visibility of the female glow. To test how female signalling is affected by latitude, we sampled glowing females during summer nights along a latitudinal gradient in Finland, Northern Europe, and used a novel apparatus to measure the intensity and peak wavelength (hue/colour) of their glow. Surprisingly, females at higher latitudes, similar to those at lower latitudes, were commonly glowing during the brightest (and hence the shortest) nights of the year. Females also glowed brighter in more northern areas, partly due to their larger body size, whereas the colour of their glow was not associated with latitude. Since females glow even during midsummer, independent of latitude, the increase in glow intensity at higher latitudes presumably serves to maintain signal visibility in brighter signalling conditions. Overall, these findings highlight the influence of environmental conditions on the evolution of sexual signals, especially in the context of species distribution range. Significance statement When environmental conditions impact signal transmission and perception, local conditions can have a crucial role in shaping animal communication and signal evolution. To analyse how dark-dependant common glow-worm females cope with variable nocturnal light environments, we used a novel apparatus, presumably not applied to living animals before, to measure female glow intensity at various latitudes along a latitudinal gradient. Interestingly, females did not avoid signalling during the brightest summer nights, but instead, their glow intensity and body size both increased with latitude. These findings suggest that females can ensure visibility to mate-searching males over a range of local conditions. Our study therefore shows how females can adapt to environmental constraints on signal visibility, and how the expression of sexual signals is shaped not only by social interactions but also by the signalling environment.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

When night never falls: female sexual signalling in a nocturnal insect along a latitudinal gradient

Borshagovski

Saari

Lehtonen

et al. 2020

Behav Ecol Sociobiol

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“…2 a,b that the luminescence intensity decreases as the temperature rises up to 34 ºC, though the wavelength peak (558 nm) and FWHM (61 nm) remain unchanged in this range. A decrease in intensity with an increase in temperature has also been noticed in cases of the other three Indian species of fireflies 7 , 11 , 17 . With the increase in temperature, the rate of the biochemical reaction inside the firefly increases and the excitation-emission process becomes more frequent.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…It has been reported that the emission peaks prominently shifted towards red for males of the species L. praeusta at 42 ºC 7 , and the winter species Diaphanes sp. at 28 ºC 11 , with the conclusion that these changes imply denaturations of the firefly enzymes at or above these temperature optimums.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A significant negative correlation between the ambient temperature and inter flash interval has been observed in specimens of Luciola cruciata at five different sites in central Japan 5 . For the Indian species Luciola praeusta at 20–40 °C, the pulse duration has been found to decrease approximately linearly with temperature for male specimens 6 and exponentially with temperature for female specimens 7 . These imply that the speed of the light-producing reaction increases approximately linearly for males and exponentially for females of this species in this range of temperature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Light from a firefly at temperatures considerably higher and lower than normal

Rabha¹,

Sharma

Barua

2021

Sci Rep

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Bioluminescence emissions from a few species of fireflies have been studied at different temperatures. Variations in the flash-duration have been observed and interesting conclusions drawn in those studies. Here we investigate steady-state and pulsed emissions from male specimens of the Indian species Sclerotia substriata at temperatures considerably higher and lower than the ones at which they normally flash. When the temperature is raised to 34 °C, the peak wavelength gets red-shifted and the emitted pulses become the narrowest which broaden considerably thereafter for small increases in temperature; this probably indicates denaturation of the enzyme luciferase catalyzing the light-producing reaction. When the temperature is decreased to the region of 10.5–9 °C, the peak gets blue-shifted and the flash-duration increased abnormally with large fluctuation; this possibly implies cold denaturation of the luciferase. We conclude that the first or hot effect is very likely to be the reason of the species being dark-active on hot days, and the second or cold one is the probable reason for its disappearance at the onset of the winter. Our study makes the inference that these two happenings determine the temperature-tolerance, which plays a major role in the selection of the habitat for the firefly.

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“…The aspects mentioned above were found and developed throughout this time. Among the main features which were unveiled we emphasize: chemical [2] and physical [5,57,75] mechanisms related to the fireflies light emission, genetic [4] and evolutionary [33,45,72] issues, the how and why fireflies synchronize in relation to the courtship and mating behavior observed in several species [42] behavior that constitutes the main functionality of synchronization [13]. The fireflies communication [40] deserved several systematic observations giving rise to establish the "language" of different species and the fact that in some species, males synchronization must be followed by the females response [83].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Fireflies Synchronization

Ramírez-Ávila

Kurths

Depickère

et al. 2018

Nonlinear Systems and Complexity

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Albeit synchronous behavior of some fireflies species is one of the paradigmatic examples of synchronization, there are not many efforts to model in a realistic way this astounding phenomenon. One of the most important features of fireflies synchronization is the cooperative behavior of many fireflies giving rise to the emergency of synchronization without any leader, a fact that took a long time to be recognized. In this chapter, we review the main attempts to build models allowing the explanation of how and why fireflies synchronize. The starting point is qualitative models based on simple observations. The latter served to formulate original mathematical models enabling not only to explain fireflies synchronization but also some other collective phenomena. Integrate-and-fire oscillators (IFOs) constitute an emblematic model to describe the fireflies' synchronous behavior, and they have also inspired ones to build electronic circuits with similar features and adapted to fireflies in the sense that they communicate with each other by means of light-pulses. The above-mentioned electronic circuits received the name of electronic fireflies or more technically, light-controlled oscillators (LCOs). These en-

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Bioluminescence emissions of female fireflies of the species Luciola praeusta

Cited by 10 publications

References 14 publications

When night never falls: female sexual signalling in a nocturnal insect along a latitudinal gradient

When night never falls: female sexual signalling in a nocturnal insect along a latitudinal gradient

Light from a firefly at temperatures considerably higher and lower than normal

Modeling Fireflies Synchronization

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