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Downtime home and Gardening-National News The Glow-worm – Ver luisant (Latin: Lampyris noctiluca)
| The Glow-worm – Ver luisant (Latin: Lampyris noctiluca) |
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| Thursday, 23 August 2007 | |
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On a warm evening as
the sun sinks beyond
the hills, you may well
see the pale green lights of the
glow-worms shining from the
long grass of the roadsides. If
you leave your window open
and protect yourself in bed
from the biting midges with a
net, you may see the same
green lights shining above you
from beetles which have
landed there. Those in the grass come from the female and those on the net from the male. The sexes are so very different in form and habit that you would be excused for imagining that they are different organisms. Moreover, neither are worms nor even look like worms.  The female looks a little like an extended woodlouse. In the picture above you can see one close to its food source, a snail. It is about two centimetres in length, and like most insects has six legs. At the rear end is an elaborate sucker used for locomotion; its legs are not that useful. The underside of the hindmost segments carries light-making organs. The creature can turn these on and off at will. If it is in a state of ‘passion’ then it is reluctant to turn them off. The tail is then upturned so that the light is seen from above. The males look like normal beetles. The photo shows several, some of which I very much regret died and fell to the bedroom floor. Those on their backs show the enormous eyes which almost meet on the underside. They appear as two large black ‘headlights’ under the head. The mouth parts are almost squeezed into nothingness between them. On the topside, the eyes have shades, easily seen in the central male in the photo. This ensures that the males respond to the beckoning lights of females in the undergrowth and do not attempt to mate with the moon. But why do the males glow? It would seem the messages signal both ways. Perhaps the females get even more switched on when males fly overhead. But even their eggs glow. There must be large numbers of these beetles, chez nous at least. Great numbers of males come into the house at dusk. Yet I see the females far less often. The males are attracted to all kinds of lights. It cannot help to conserve these beasties for so many to succumb to the huge numbers of lamps provided by man.  The larvæ and females eat snails. They manage to paralyse the prey with a small nip and injection on the edge of the flesh. Then gradually they inject a dissolving enzyme. The resulting juice is sucked back. A snail can last some time, maybe one is enough for life. The adult males probably do not feed. The exceeding commonness of the species is a mystery to me. How can they spread when the females cannot fly? I have in these articles previously commented on the wonder of the spread of flightless females of various species. You can email your observations to Brian at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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