Scientists discover two mechanisms at work in crustacean's dazzling light displays

Scientists discover two mechanisms at work in crustacean’s dazzling light displays




In a classic scenario, you'd expect to find a clear correlation between how long the flash lasts and the structure of the enzyme responsible for it, said Hensley. "And that's true for some of the , but it's not true for all of the species."


"That was one of the surprising results we got out of our paper," said Hensley. The team's findings appear in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.

This discovery was due in part to the group of animals Hensley chose to study. Because ostracods spit out their light, Hensley could study the chemistry separately from the behavior of the animal itself. Contrast this with fireflies, in which the reaction happens inside their bodies. As a result, it's under the animal's behavioral control the whole time, explained Todd Oakley, a professor in UC Santa Barbara's department of ecology, evolution and marine biology, and Hensley's advisor and coauthor. "We can get at more in terms of the specifics of the chemistry because it's outside the body," he said.


Hensley is currently investigating how certain changes in the enzyme affect its ability to produce light: make it work faster, slower, or not at all. He also hopes to reconstruct the group's ancestral and test its functions to see how it may have differed from the ones the animals use today.

At the same time, the team is turning an eye toward behavioral aspects of the ostracods' mating display. For instance, they'd like to determine how much pulse length matters to female ostracods, compared to aspects like spacing or direction. Males of certain species synchronize their displays when surrounded by other males, creating a mesmerizing underwater light show. Hensley plans to take a closer look at this behavior in collaboration with colleagues at University of Kansas.

"Just describing how such diversity arises is our goal," said Hensley, "and this may give us insight into how it actually occurs."

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More information: Nicholai M. Hensley et al, Phenotypic evolution shaped by current enzyme function in the bioluminescent courtship signals of sea fireflies, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2019). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.2621
Citation: Scientists discover two mechanisms at work in crustacean's dazzling light displays (2019, January 30) retrieved 20 August 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2019-01-scientists-mechanisms-crustacean-dazzling.html

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