Firefly Femmes Fatales: A Case Study in the Semiotics of Deception

Abstract

Mimicry and deception are two important issues in studies about animal communication. The reliability of animal signs and the problem of the benefits of deceiving in sign exchanges are interesting topics in the evolution of communication. In this paper, we intend to contribute to an understanding of deception by studying the case of aggressive signal mimicry in fireflies, investigated by James Lloyd. Firefly femmes fatales are specialized in mimicking the mating signals of other species of fireflies with the purpose of attracting responding males to become their prey. These aggressive mimics are a major factor in the survival and reproduction of both prey and predator. It is a case of deception through active falsification of information that leads to efficient predation by femmes fatales fireflies and triggered evolutionary processes in their preys' communicative behaviors. There are even nested coevolutionary interactions between these fireflies, leading to a remarkable system of deceptive and counterdeceptive signaling behaviors. We develop here a semiotic model of firefly deception and also consider ideas advanced by Lloyd about the evolution of communication, acknowledging that deception can be part of the explanation of why communication evolves towards increasing complexity. Increasingly complex sign exchanges between fireflies evolve in an extremely slow pace. Even if deceptive maneuvers are played out time and time again between particular firefly individuals, the evolution of the next level of complexity-and thus the next utterance in the dialogue between species-is likely to take an immense amount of generations.

The Emergence of Cultural Attractors: How Dynamic Populations of Learners Achieve Collective Cognitive Alignment

“…For example, consider the chemical signals used by Dictyostelium amboebae to trigger aggregation when resources become scarce (Consalvo et al, 2019). Indeed, reliable signal-meaning pairings can subsequently be capitalized upon for deceptive signaling (Searcy, Anderson, & Nowicki, 2006), which has been observed in animals with relatively primitive cognitive systems, such as fireflies (El-Hani, Queiroz, & Stjernfelt, 2010). Human culture, however, involves communication of complex, THE EMERGENCE OF CULTURAL ATTRACTORS 10 often-abstract information.…”

Animal Communication Overview

“…According to Searcy and Nowicki (2005) (who use a slightly modified definition by Mitchell (1986)) deception occurs when a "receiver registers something Y from a signaler; the receiver responds in a way that benefits the signaler and is appropriate if Y means X; and it is not true that X is the case" (p. 5). For example, female fireflies of several Photuris species mimic the sexual flash signals of females from other firefly species, for example, Robopus and Photinus, in order to lure in males from those species and prey on them (Lloyd, 1983;El-Hani, Queiroz, & Stjernfelt, 2010). The males register what they interpret as a sexual signal by female conspecifics, and therefore approach the flash signal, which would be an appropriate (i.e., adaptive) response if it were indeed produced by a female of their own species and not a deception by another species of fireflies.…”

Bumble bee queen pheromones are context-dependent

“…A stereotypical response to a signal regardless of context can pose signi cant risks to the tness of the receiver: such a response can be situationally inappropriate and thus maladaptive, or the receiver may even be exploited by the signaler through dishonest signaling (e.g. 4,5 ),…”