What are the characteristics of fireflies?

Firefly, also known as "bright" or "night light" in ancient China, is a small beetle belonging to the family Coleoptera Fireflies. There are about 1500 species of fireflies in the world. Fireflies overwinter as mature larvae, come out in April of the following year, pupate in May, and become adults in about half a month. Adults lay eggs in June and then hatch into larvae.

The larvae of fireflies are grayish brown, tapering at both ends, flat up and down, shaped like a "shuttle" on a textile machine, and the tail end can emit light. However, because of its unattractive appearance, it is not noticed by people. Female fireflies in adult stage are wingless or wingless, unable to fly, similar in appearance to larvae, and can emit fluorescence. In the summer night, fireflies are flying. This is a male firefly looking for someone with a "lantern". Adults of fireflies don't eat at all, and it is the larvae of fireflies that attack and prey on snails.

Unlike carnivorous insects, fireflies pounce on edible prey, but approach snails "enthusiastically" I saw it "kissing" snails frequently with its slender jaws. The snail didn't feel the fatal danger coming to his head at all. It crawled slowly with its stomach and feet, and the tentacles on its forehead were still very long. However, fireflies "kiss" only five or six times at most. Everything about the snail stopped, its abdomen stopped crawling, its body lost its gentle curve, and its tentacles fell down. Obviously, this snail was stung by something.

According to the observation of French entomologist Fabres, the weapon used by fireflies to attack snails is a pair of small jaws as thin as hair and as sharp as hooks. With these sharp jaws, fireflies bite people almost like kissing, and at the same time, they quickly inject a liquid that can paralyze the whole body into the snail through the narrow gap of the jaws. This tiny amount of anesthetic can paralyze snails for several days.

In human surgery, before the invention of painless anesthesia, firefly, a talented "anesthesiologist", had already performed anesthesia.

Fireflies are not only good at attacking crawling snails, but also good at attacking snails curled up in shells close to the ground. Fireflies will carefully observe the snail, look for the slightly exposed gap in the mantle, and then draw out their own "weapons" and gently insert them into the gap to attack, so that the snail loses consciousness. Sometimes, the snail is at the top of the grass and curled up in the snail's shell. Fireflies can make snails unconscious and eat them.

No matter how big a snail is, it is usually anesthetized by a firefly first. After the snail lost consciousness, in a short time, other fireflies seemed to receive the invitation signal from the "master" and came to have dinner with the master in twos and threes. It is also difficult for fireflies to eat "dinner". After a few bites, the "guest" injected a substance similar to digestion, turned the snail's solid meat into liquid, and then drank wildly until the snail was only an empty shell. Then, they scrubbed the whole body with a bunch of rose-shaped fingers on their tails before leaving contentedly.

Snails, in the confrontation with humans, need human brains to deal with them, but nature has arranged fireflies to subdue snails easily.

Recently, in the process of studying how to prevent sharks from attacking humans, people accidentally found something on fireflies, which has a strong role in controlling sharks. It is found that fireflies have an unpleasant smell inside and outside. Hungry-eyed birds never touch it again, and greedy lizards never look at this little beetle again.

American biochemist Job Bonavin? Tula found that the smell of fireflies had a strong effect on repelling sharks. He extracted these substances from freeze-dried fireflies and put them in a sea pool where sharks with keen sense of smell were kept. After a few minutes, the shark began to panic, tremble and paralysis, and then died soon. In fireflies, what causes the rapid death of sharks remains to be further studied. But this phenomenon has attracted people's attention.

Firefly is not only a brilliant "anesthesiologist", but also an excellent "expert" in charging. Their tails can emit colorful light, and different kinds of fireflies can emit different colors of light. Some are light blue, some are orange red, some are light yellow, some are jade white, and there is a firefly in Spain that can flash tricolor!

The light of fireflies is calm and soft, just like the light falling from the crescent moon on a quiet summer night. Ancient poets in China often used fireflies as the theme of chanting and wrote many beautiful poems. "Qiu Guang painted a silver candle with a cold screen and fanned a small fan to fly fireflies" was written by Du Mu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty. Fireflies, with their unique fluorescence, have won the favor of a good couple as a "language of love".

One summer night, under the dim moonlight, the male firefly hovered and danced at low altitude, flashing its bright and beautiful little light from time to time. At this time, if the female fireflies in the grass also glow, the male fireflies will fly down the light spot and jump into the arms of the female fireflies.

American entomologist Lloyd found that fireflies can simulate the light signals of the same sex and other kinds of fireflies. This kind of simulation is used to deceive and interfere with opponents, and it is a cheating means to seize spouses. It was found that most female fireflies came out of their hiding places, and the mating time was only five or six minutes, while it took a week for male fireflies to find a mate. Therefore, male fireflies must strive to win in the fierce mate competition. Male fireflies will destroy the "courtship" conversation of other male fireflies with sudden flashes, or send out flashes synchronized with competitors to confuse female fireflies, and even simulate the flash signal of female fireflies to trick other male fireflies into leaving the "target", thus achieving the goal of possessing female fireflies themselves.

Since a long time ago, the working people in our country have applied fluorescence. More than 65,438+0,000 years ago, in the Jin Dynasty, a poor and eager-to-learn child caught many fireflies and put them in a veil to illuminate his place of study at night. There is a kind of cattle firefly in Taiwan Province Province and Hainan Island of China, which is as big as a silkworm moth and as bright as a lamp. Local farmers put it in glass bottles to trap and kill rice borers. In India, South America and other places, there are fireflies bigger than cattle fireflies. Whenever they go out at night, they just need to grab a few and put them in transparent boxes, so they can light up the road without flashlights.

Why can fireflies shine? What kind of lamp is it? Now the answer is finally revealed.

It turns out that the luminous organ in the abdomen of fireflies is composed of luminous layers of thousands of luminous cells. Above the luminescent layer, there is also a transparent skin, just like a small light-transmitting window.

Each luminescent cell contains two substances: fluorescein and luciferase. Fluorescein is a producer of light, which is a heat-resistant substance and easy to be oxidized. Luciferase is a physiologically active catalyst and a heat-labile small molecular weight crystalline protein. The mechanism of its luminescence is that fluorescein is oxidized and fluoresced with the participation of intracellular water under the action of luciferase. Oxygen enters luminescent cells along the short-stemmed and multi-branched trachea.

In the luminous cells of fireflies, the amount of fluorescein is limited, so "live lanterns" should be lit again and again. Where do you get all the fluorescein you need? Modern research shows that there is an exquisite high-energy compound-ATP (adenosine triphosphate) in all living things. Someone once took down many fireflies' luminous bodies, dried them, ground them into powder, and put the powder into glassware. When a proper amount of water is added, the mixture makes them emit light yellow fluorescence, and then the fluorescence goes out. At this time, if the extracted ATP solution is added to the mixture, the fluorescence will reappear and the light will become brighter. This experiment proves that it is ATP that provides the necessary energy to "recombine" fluorescein and make it glow again. Every time fluorescein emits light, it is "regenerated" by interacting with ATP.

The luminous efficiency of fireflies is amazing. It has been measured that the heat generated by fluorescence is only a quarter of a degree Celsius, and there is almost no heat. So fluorescence is also called luminescence. Because of this, fireflies can almost convert chemical energy in the body into light energy, which is several times or even dozens of times the efficiency of modern light power supply.

Why do fireflies have such high luminous efficiency? It turns out that when fireflies emit light, the energy supply is strictly quantitative in the biochemical reaction process of ATP and luciferase. Some people compare the number of oxidized fluorescein molecules with the number of quantum dots that produce light, and find that each fluorescein molecule consumes just one quantum of light, thus making its luminous rate almost reach 100%.

In recent years, people have made great achievements in studying the luminescence of fireflies. Pure fluorescein is separated from the luminous body of fireflies. Then pure luciferase was isolated, and then fluorescein-cold light source was synthesized artificially.

As early as the thirties and forties, people copied fluorescent lamps with soft light, no hotline, no harm to eyesight and special power saving according to the principle of fireflies. Then several kinds of biological light sources were copied, which were used as lighting in mines full of explosive gas and also provided lighting sources for frogmen to dive into deep water.

Militarily, this kind of luminous body does not need power supply and will not produce magnetic field, so it can be used to clear magnetic mines and other work. Later, luminous walls without heat dissipation and luminaries suitable for various special purposes were developed.

In this way, mankind has entered a brand-new era of cold light source.

Modern scientists have found that fluorescein and luciferase extracted from fireflies can react with ATP in animal cells to make them glow.

This great discovery enlightens people that fluorescein and luciferase can be used to determine the ATP content and concentration of organisms.

A new type of biological high-energy substance detector composed of fluorescein and luciferase system was designed abroad. This detector can accurately determine the existence and quantity of ATP in organisms. This detector can detect the existence of 10- 15g ATP in the object.

At present, this brand-new detector for biological high-energy substances has been widely used in medical and scientific research fields. Soon, it will be applied to the vast space to determine whether there is living matter on other planets.

Fireflies, with their unique weapons, help us to destroy snails that destroy crops, and make use of the superb luminous skills acquired through hundreds of millions of years of evolution, which has made important enlightenment for human beings to study photoelectric efficiency. Therefore, fireflies are our good friends.