One who has ever seen how at night in the field or in thethe forest is dancing with a myriad of tiny lights, will not forget about this bewitching spectacle. Would you like to take a closer look at the mysterious flashlights that adorn the summer night? This firefly is an insect that belongs to the beetle family, a coleoptera group, called Lampyridae in Latin.
Why do they shine?
Its amazing ability to glow fireflieshave because of their lower abdomen there are special organs consisting of photogenic cells and underlying reflectors, which are filled with crystals of uric acid. Oxidation processes occur that cause luminescence. Light can be of different strength and duration, but always greenish or reddish-yellow. They use insects for protection from predators, warning them about their inedibility, and attracting representatives of the opposite sex.
Firefly - insect of the night
In our latitudes there are several speciesfireflies. Some of them, Ivanov's worms, are night insects that spend a day in dense grass and fallen leaves, and with the onset of the night they go hunting. These fireflies live in the forest, where they hunt spiders, snails and small insects. Female Ivanova worm can not fly and completely brownish-brown, only on the lower side three segments of the abdomen are white. They are brightly shining. Firefly - an insect, with which you can even read, leading a live flashlight on the lines. And the fireflies living in the Caucasus glow in flight. These reddish sparks, dancing in the dense darkness of the southern night, give it a special mystery and charm.
Marriage period
At the moment when it's time for mating,the firefly male, whose photo you saw in the article, goes to search for a sign from a female who wants to continue the genus. And as soon as he finds one, he descends to it. The fact is that different kinds of fireflies emit light with different frequencies, and this is the guarantee that representatives of one species will mate among themselves. Firefly - an insect, which chooses the partner is the female. It determines it by the nature of the glow. The higher the frequency of its flicker, the brighter the light emanating from it, the more likely the male will charm the partner. In the tropical forests, firefly males perform their collective serenades to their ladies, while simultaneously lighting and extinguishing their flashlights. Trees, braided with such "light-music", shine brighter than shop windows in big cities. But there are also cases of deadly mating games. The female uses an invocatory luminous sign in order to attract males of a different species. When the seduced fertilizers are, it simply eats them.
Of the eggs that the female deposited afterfertilization, there are large gluttonous black larvae with yellow spots. By the way, they also shine, as well as adults. By autumn they hide in the bark of trees, where they remain for the whole winter. And the next spring, waking up, a few weeks of feeding, then pupate and after 1 - 2.5 weeks of them develop new adult fireflies, able to surprise us with their mysterious night shine.
