Researchers seek to explain why there are so few land dwelling bioluminescent species
(Phys.org)—Visitors to the world's oceans are likely to find a wide variety of bioluminescent creatures, especially as they descend to depths where sunlight can't reach. The ability to glow has evolved in underwater organisms for a variety of reasons, from attracting prey to helping find a mate. On land however, things are very different. Other than 13 known species of insects, which of course include the firefly, very few other creatures have evolved the ability to glow and now, new research suggests that virtually all of them evolved much more recently than did marine dwellers. Peter Vršanský and colleagues from the Slovak Academy of Sciences have found after studying the collective history of all known bioluminescent species that land dwellers apparently evolved from a single source some sixty five million years ago, whereas their marine counterparts first came about closer to four hundred million years ago. Their paper describing their...