Why do fireflies exist?

jtbell

Where is "here" (at least generally)? I don't think they exist outside of North America, at least not in the countries in South America and Europe from where my college gets its native-speaker foreign language assistants. My wife is their "mother hen" while they're here, and so we have them at our house for dinner as a group occasionally. They always marvel at the fireflies when they're "in season," because they don't have them at home.

I've always had fireflies around in the places where I've lived (Ohio, Michigan, upstate New York, South Carolina).

You do mention prairies. Maybe fireflies need trees or similar vegetation for shelter. I've always lived in places with plenty of trees.

Danger

I'm in a town close to Calgary, but I also spent 13 years 35 miles SE of Detroit (still in Canada). I started a few miles from here, which was very rural, then moved down there in '65, then back here in '78.

baywax

I'm pretty sure you'd have seen the ICE GLOW WORMS that inhabit the frozen reaches of the Bow River then. ()

It's interesting they call them "glow worms". I always wondered where that name applied or came from.

Since when is Calgary urban!!?

Danger

I think that they began to consider themselves that after they passed the 1,000,000 population point.
And no... I have never seen, nor even heard of, Ice Glow Worms. Sounds like some kind of lure that you'd sell to guys who ice-fish. (And the Bow runs through the middle of my town.)

baywax

I'm just kidding. But I've heard of ice worms. When I heard about ice worms I thought if they had the capacity to glow (like a glow worm) they would make good landing lights in the northern parts where the airstrips are ice. But I think ice worms are a myth.

Ya, Calgary has grown tremendously. Better hope they don't find oilsands under the place 'cause they'll dig that up too!

jtbell

Hey, it's not New York or Chicago or Toronto, but it does have an impressive skyline! (Go Flames! )

Evo

I've noticed that wet springs seem to bring them out in abundance. But continued wet weather will make them disappear.

I've had late springs where they were so plentiful, that all the surrounding fields were a constant twinkling. It was so beautiful to behold.

Integral

You do not find any fireflys west of the Rocky's, and perhaps not even west of the Mississippi.

hypatia

The fireflies that occur in the Western United States do not have light-producing organs so you may think that fireflies only occur in the Eastern and Midwestern United States.

lol You got them, there just not as flashy as ours

Integral

So the question is... Is a firefly that does not flash, still a firefly?

hypatia

Yep, same species, but there all talk, and no flash

Integral

I have always heard that the flash was a mating thing, so how do the western males (or is it females?) attract a mate? The organs for the flash must be present, or it would be a different species. Wonder why they aren't armed?

Is this a argument for claims that the east coast is flashier then the west?

hypatia

Or maybe the west coast is just too layed back to bother with flashing... Like, "here I am honey, if ya want it, crawl on over".

When I have some extra time, I'll look into it a bit more.

Integral

Why do I feel cheated? I always thought that they simply did not live here. Now I learn that they are here, just choose not to be flashy.

Ouabache

Hmmm squids, fireflys and angler fish all generate light using the same chemical reaction? I wonder if these lifeforms stumbled upon this ability independently or are they evolutionarily related? It would be curious if they share the same gene sequence that codes for this mechanism.

iansmith

As far as I remember, the bioluminescence for some squid is due to symbiotic bacteria of the vibrio and photobacterium species living in specialized tissues rather. The bioluminescence is not produce by the squid itself.

Also, I think the substrate (luciferin) for each group is fairly unrelated but bioluminescence is very common for deep sea fish and in other sea animal and dinoflagella are also capable of biobioluminescence. There might be common evolutionnary start point fairly early on for at least eukaryotes and bacteria might have evolve independently or "stolen" genes from the fish/squid.

baywax

Is it possible that every living organism carries or carried the ability to produce biobioluminescence yet the ability is only actualized in cases where it has served as a survival trait?