It's Dinner Time!
Adult fireflies typically do not feed, but will ingest
pollen and nectar. Female Photuris fireflies are predaceous, and they are
guided by their prey’s luminescence and attack flying fireflies
at night. The Photuris females will fake the flashes of other
females of another genus, Photinus, to lure Photinus males in.
These predaceous females are called 'femme fatale.'
The Photuris females do this in order to ingest the chemical,
lucibufagins, which is toxic. The Photuris fireflies do not
originally have this toxin, but Photinus
fireflies do. The chemical will protect them from predators
because they then taste bad and are toxic to them.
The larvae are predaceous and feed on slugs, snails,
earthworms,
and other soft bodied organisms. The larvae are able to detect
the slime trail of a slug or an earthworm and track it down.
Once they have found their prey, they inject a highly toxic
digestive substance into their prey that paralyzes them quickly,
and they
then suck out the liquefied body contents.
Fireflies and their larvae have a complete digestive system
where their food is broken down and the nutrients are absorbed.
The nutrients are then carried to the different parts of the
body via the firefly’s open circulatory system. In an open
circulatory system, the blood (usually called hemolymph) flows
freely in open body cavities where it makes direct contact with
all internal tissues and organs.
On to Reproduction!
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