2023-12-04 11:34:27
A bright blue constellation illuminates the waters of the Caribbean following dark. This is an extremely rare nuptial display of small ostracods, sea fireflies which produce bioluminescent slime in order to reproduce. A spectacle captured on video by researchers.
“Fireworks”, “luminous ball”, “Christmas garland” : here is how we might describe the ballet of underwater fireflies observed by scientists. These tiny crustaceans called ostracodes were captured on video as they produced glowing mucus in the night, in an attempt to impress potential mates, during a courtship ritual giant. “Males pull out all the stops on the dance floor”by synchronizing their bioluminescent capacity with others, summarizes Nicholai M. Hensleyresearcher at Cornell University, United States, and lead author of a study that describes the phenomenon, published in Proceedings of the royal society B.
A wonderful spectacle
These little creatures are not no bigger than a grain of sand or a sesame seed, but they manage to produce a powerful blue light. It is the males who secrete these naturally iridescent proteins, and females who are naturally attracted to this fleeting glow. “This repeats several times, which creates a sort of light pattern, like Morse code in the water. Then other males begin their light displays during synchronous swimming, and underwater, when it’s dark it looks like stars that flash and leave tiny trails of light”still describes the scientist.
Mini blue light spitting shrimp
A fascinating luminous ritual, rarewhich does not occur randomly, the specialists discovered. “The mating dance sequence does not take place that following sunset, at nautical twilight, when the lune don’t shine in the night sky.” The synchronized swimming of these amazing living beings might also be quite orchestrated. In the video, we see these fireflies producing their bioluminescent mucus in succession, undulating like a wave, before taking a break, and starting once more. The hypothesis of the authors of the study is that the first male to produce light sets off a chain reaction among its neighbors, competing to attract females.
These ostracods were first discovered in 2017in a reef on the island of Bocas del Toro, off the coast of Panama, where there is a research station. There are around a hundred species in the Caribbean, but none would offer a spectacle as dense and brilliant as this oneaccording to professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology James Morin, who has studied them since the 1980s. These beasts “on steroids”, which look like mini shrimps, would have a gland, just above their mouth, in which two chemicals create a bright blue glow when combined. This colored sputum would also taste bad : it would allow them to force their predators to spit them out. A specificity that sea fireflies share with terrestrial fireflies, even though their common ancestor lived around 500 million years ago!
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