Silent Sparks by Sara Lewis

Author:Sara Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

FIREFLY LOOK-ALIKES: TASTY OR TOXIC?

If a creature is holding up a warning sign, then it’s poisonous—right? The struggle to survive is a powerful force, so the firefly defense story merits a messy subplot. Other creatures slyly imitate the carefully crafted displays of fireflies and other well-defended creatures. The best advertisements spawn copycats; sometimes these copycats undermine the warning message, yet other times they reinforce it.

If you were to peruse any insect collection—or even click through firefly photos tagged on Flickr—you’d notice that other insects often closely resemble fireflies (Figure 7.3). Such firefly mimics have independently evolved across many unrelated groups—moths, cockroaches, soldier beetles, net-winged beetles, and longhorn beetles, for instance. These aren’t close relatives, and so there’s no reason for these other insects to show such strikingly similar color patterns. Instead, these surprising look-alikes arose through convergent evolution among unrelated species, each driven by the shared exigency of avoiding attack. This evolutionary convergence on a common danger-flag magnificently demonstrates Wallace’s hunch about the potent survival value of warning displays.

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