Bioluminescence in the West

Every once in a while - and often enough that it leaves me feeling like a dunce - I meet up with something in the world of nature I didn't even have a clue existed. Like that click beetle with headlights.

It came about it in the late '70s thanks to a high school kid in Sierra Vista High School in southeast Arizona, when I was manager of Ramsey Canyon Preserve. The Preserve was then the "Hummingbird Capitol of the World," nestled in the Huachuca (Wah-choo-kah) Mountains just north of Bisbee.

Leonard Taylor and my son Dean got to be pals as they walked up Ramsey Canyon Road from where the school bus dropped them off. Leonard lived at the mouth of the canyon, while Dean lived with Sue and me in the manager's house at the upper end of the road.

Leonard was, by birth I think, a most curious young man, and his dear parents did nothing to discourage that intense desire to know who and what was where in the Huachuca Mountains. (Leonard's gone on to become a leading author and contributor of field guides to the backcountry of southeast Arizona with his "Trails of the Huachucas").

All this led to the phone ringing on a delightful summer night.

I picked up the receiver, and without fanfare or introduction a voice shouted, "Jim! Ya' gotta' come down here right now and see what I've found!" I recognized the voice and started to ask Leonard what it was that he was so excited about, but all I heard was a definitive "click."

I shouted to Dean and Sue, "I just got a call from Leonard, and he's got something-or-another by the neck, or it's dragging him all around the yard!" With that, we jumped into our old VW camper and took off down the road.

When we rolled into Leonard's yard I could see someone with a flashlight bent over in the shrubs, either following or chasing - or being chased - by something. "Well it doesn't look too big to handle..." I said as we piled out of the VW and charged across his lawn toward the waving flashlight.

"It's over here," Leonard shouted, and over "here" we went.

"Look... look," he shouted again, "Right there! It's got lights!"

Sure enough, as we all got closer to the object he was holding the beam of the flashlight near we could see a tiny yellowish light moving on the back side of a yucca leaf. But as we got closer the one light became two, and as we finally closed in on Leonard's creature it turned out to be an adult click beetle with headlights on its thorax.

"Holy cats! "I thought. "Fireflies I know - but lighted click beetles I do not."

The fireflies of my childhood days back east were always a delight, and it never even occurred to me that, right off the start, the very name was incorrect. Fireflies are NOT flies, they are BEETLES. Just like the old saying, "Not all insects are bugs, but all bugs are insects."

Lightning bugs are not "bugs" either, they're also in the zoological order, Coleoptera: beetles, but commonly called "fireflies" or "lightning bugs" for their conspicuous use of bioluminescence: capacity to create chemical light, a "cold light," without infrared, or ultraviolet frequencies.

There are about 2,000 species of fireflies found in temperate and tropical environments, many in marshes or in wet, wooded areas where the larvae have abundant sources of food. The larvae emit light and are often called "glow worms."

OK, I knew about "glow worms," but had no idea there are so many species of fireflies, not to mention glowing click beetles.

There was a really great exhibit at the High Desert Museum last June that Sue and I missed; it took place right at the apex of our golden eagle fieldwork. The exhibit explored how and why some living organisms produce light through a chemical reaction in their bodies.

Visitors learned about a chemical process that produces cool light and explored the world of light-producing terrestrial organisms like fireflies, glowworms and fungi - and I missed it all. Weep, oh weep!

With our Earth warming, and Mexican birds and butterflies fluttering all about Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, it my not be too unrealistic to start looking around on the coming summer nights to see if there are any bioluminescent insects wandering around Sisters Country, lighting things up.