Manifestation of Peaks in a Live Firefly Flash

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

“…On the other hand, at temperatures lower than approximately 21 °C, pulse-durations show large increase in a non-linear manner with lowering of the temperature 8 —almost like the ones observed with fireflies positioned under a strong static magnetic field 9 . Below 17 °C for females and 15 °C for males of this species, and from below the normal flashing temperature of about 28 °C for females and below about 22 °C for males of another Indian species Asymmetricata circumdata , peaks in flashes get split into three, manifesting the three luminescent forms of the emitter oxyluciferin, with lifetimes of the order of milliseconds 1 .…”

“…It is well-known that oxygen is the biochemical trigger which excites the substrate luciferin, and produces the photo-emitter molecule oxyluciferin in presence of ATP and Mg 2 + , the reaction being catalyzed by the enzyme luciferase. In the normal flashing state of a live firefly, visible light is produced as the excited state oxyluciferin decays to the ground state via a pathway followed by molecules indicating phosphorescence 1 . It has been shown that the pulses produced by the firefly are manifestations of an oscillating chemical reaction 2 .…”

Nonlinear model of the firefly flash

“…Addition of time delay in our model explains low temperature behavior of the firefly flash pattern. At low temperature [20,21], the firefly enzymatic catalytic reaction becomes slower and slower with decreasing temperature resulting broadening of the peaks (distorted into two or more than two peaks) and increase in the duration of the lighting cycle. At lower temperature, k 1 for the production of Luc • LH 2 -AMP at some earlier time is found to be smaller compared to other non delayed case which obeying the slowness of the reaction.…”

“…We would now like to note the occurrence of pulse with multiple peaks, especially the occurrence of double peak pulse at low temperature [21]. Following the trends of dependence of various parameters on temperature (see Table .I) we look for a regime with temperature lower than 20 • C, where multiple peak pulse may occur with the constraints ρ < 1.80, β < 0.052, η > 8.20, and t num > 14.21.…”

“…An oscillator model for the firefly lighting cycle can also help us understand the large scale synchronisation, as mentioned above. The basic experimental input to our model is due to a series of spectroscopic analysis carried out in-vivo and in-vitro on fireflies by several groups [14,[20][21][22][23][24]. In Section II, we construct our basic dynamical model based on the well known set of reactions leading to the firefly lighting cycle, where we build up a self-consistent cycle.…”