Animals don’t only need to look for and attract food: Bioluminescence can also play a part in attracting mates. There are different ways that animals use glowing to attract mates.
1:Flashing lights – female fireflies are attracted to flasher males. The bright flashes generated by the male fireflies are signals designed to catch the eye of interested females. If she feels one of the males, the female flashes back in response (1). Different species of fireflies have different duration and rate of flashing. Females are only attracted to the flashing pattern of males of their own species (2).
2:Moving their body
One example of a species that uses its body are fireworms that live on the floor of the ocean. With the onset of the full moon they move to the open water where the females of some species, like Odontosyllis enopla, use bioluminescence to attract males while moving round in circles (1).
There are also Anglerfish that have a pole-like structure on the top of their head that glows at the very end. This glowing is used to communicate between the male and female in order to mate (1).
3:Vomit glowing mucus
In a very bizarre method of attracting mates, some males crustaceans actually vomit up a bioluminescent mucus to attract females. Their display looks like strings of tiny, glowing pearls. Some light up in a zigzag pattern, others appear in a horizontal form upward toward the surface. The glowing goes for a few seconds, then fades to black like underwater ghosts. But these are blobs of mucus vomited up by crustaceans called ostracods. Males use the vomit to impress potential mates.(3) To see a cool video of this behaviour, click on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HXXQBz6Vv0&feature=emb_imp_woyt
An underwater image of ostracods glowing courtship displays.
1:https://www.livescience.com/4640-firefly-flash-bring-sex-death.htm
Dear Joseph,
I have enjoyed reading your research post; great work!
I have some questions for you, specific to your research.
1. Which type of animals would you believe are best for having the ability to glow? (land animals? sea animals?)
2. Do you think the ability to glow would help us humans the same way? Haha.
I have some resources I found for you about glowing animals, even some specific to one’s you’ve mentioned:
Fireflies & Lightning Animals: https://www.firefly.org/facts-about-fireflies.html
Bioluminescence in fish: http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/fish/bioluminescence
Hope these help you!
Warm regards,
Galicia.
Joseph,
Great job on your round of research! I realy enjoyed reading your work! It was really interesting to learn that one of the ways males atrract mates is to vomit mucus!
Once again, great job on your round of research! I am looking forward to reading more of your posts!
Here is a website that may help you in your next round of research:
https://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/fish/bioluminescence
Best of luck!
The animals that I believe that they have the best ability to glow are the fireflies and glow worms because they have bioluminescence abilities.
I do not think so it can help us the same as the animals. it will help the people indirectly like we can extract the genetics that help them to glow and use them on trees to light up our streets.
hi joseph,
You did a great job on your research! I’ve never heard of vomit mucus before but it sounds really cool.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-many-origins-of-glowing-fish here’s a link to the origin/ history of glowing fishes that might interest you.
i look forward to ur posts!
xx
ronnie