What food do fireflies eat?

Fireflies, also known as night light, sedum, such as gleaming, night light, fireflies, midnight candles, night lights, etc., are small beetles of the family Coleoptera, which are famous for their tail glowing. They are distributed in tropical, subtropical and temperate regions and are active at night. Eggs, larvae and pupae often glow, and adults glow to attract members of the opposite sex. Larvae prey on snails and small insects and like to live in humid, warm and luxuriant places.

What food do fireflies eat?

Fireflies are carnivores, which mainly eat snails, field snails and shellfish at the larval stage. Although the larvae of fireflies are very small, they are so daring that they dare to compete with snails until they are eaten. This is all because it has a unique set of "martial arts". When the larva finds the snail, it pricks the snail with its needle-like mouth. What? It turns out that when the snail is given an "anesthetic injection", the firefly can emit a toxin that turns the snail over. Then, the snail is injected with a digestive enzyme until the snail meat is turned into a rare and delicious gravy. Then they summoned their companions, gathered around the snail, stuck their needle-like mouths into the snail's meat and sucked up the gravy. After the larvae become adults, they no longer hunt, just drink some dew or gather some nectar until they starve to death.

The living habits of fireflies

According to their living environment, fireflies can be divided into two categories: terrestrial and aquatic, and the former accounts for the majority. Terrestrial fireflies mostly live in places with high shelter, lush vegetation and high relative humidity, while aquatic fireflies have higher requirements on the environment, and the water can not be polluted nor can they be polluted by light. Firefly larvae are also divided into aquatic and terrestrial larvae, which generally need 6 times of metamorphosis before entering the pupa stage. In the grass, it is often found that the two glowing points in the tail are terrestrial mountain window firefly larvae and two-color tricolor larvae between black and white. The wings of these two species of growing females are degraded, and the shape of the larvae is not much different before the males can fly.

The luminous principle of fireflies

The glow of fireflies is a kind of bioluminescence. Fireflies have special luminous cells, in which there are two kinds of chemicals, one is called luciferin (in fireflies is called firefly luciferin), and the other is called luciferase. Luciferin can consume ATP under the catalysis of luciferase and react with oxygen to produce the excited state of oxidized luciferin. When the oxidized luciferin returns to the ground state from the excited state, photons are released. Almost all of the energy released in the reaction is released in the form of light, only a very small part is released in the form of heat, and the reaction efficiency is 95%. As a result, beetles do not burn too much. So far, humans have not been able to produce such an efficient light source. There are many white patches in the lower abdomen of the worm, which are actually the transparent parts of its carapace. There is a white film inside that reflects light, so this part is white during the day.