One of the reasons that fireflies light up is to attract mates. But the light might have another purpose too.
Bats are big predators of flying insects. But bats hate the taste of fireflies. They taste them and then immediately spit them out, shaking their little bat heads.
Researchers put several species of insects including firefles in a dark room together with bats who had never encountered fireflies before. The unexperienced bats initially went for the fireflies just like other the insects, and the response was "Eeewww, Pah!" By the fourth day, the bats learned their lesson and avoided the fireflies. But the bats continued to take the other non-noxious insects, with upwards of a 90% success rate.
So a firefly's light might be an announcement to predators: "I'm not edible! Don't even try to eat me!" (Many poisonous plants and animals are brightly colored for precisely that reason, to catch the attention and to warn off whatever might want to eat them.)
https://news.boisestate.edu/update/2018/...-they-did/
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaat6601
Bats are big predators of flying insects. But bats hate the taste of fireflies. They taste them and then immediately spit them out, shaking their little bat heads.
Researchers put several species of insects including firefles in a dark room together with bats who had never encountered fireflies before. The unexperienced bats initially went for the fireflies just like other the insects, and the response was "Eeewww, Pah!" By the fourth day, the bats learned their lesson and avoided the fireflies. But the bats continued to take the other non-noxious insects, with upwards of a 90% success rate.
So a firefly's light might be an announcement to predators: "I'm not edible! Don't even try to eat me!" (Many poisonous plants and animals are brightly colored for precisely that reason, to catch the attention and to warn off whatever might want to eat them.)
https://news.boisestate.edu/update/2018/...-they-did/
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaat6601