ABSTRACT

The mating signals and ecology of fireflies are diverse and the biology of exceptional species can be a source of historical information. Such species are functioning theoretical models and as working surrogates can be used for observational and experimental studies on the selection pressures, population divergences, and trajectories of history. Transitions between signaling modes and ecology, the impact of signal–focusing predators, and the influence of a species' unique ecology on its sexual biology are among phenomena that extant fireflies may illuminate. This paper describes idiosyncratic elements in the mating biology of several lampyrids, and then outlines some basic patterns in the mating biology of Photuris fireflies, themselves firefly predators and important agents of selection for many other fireflies.

INTRODUCTION

Fireflies initially caught my interest because they provided an opportunity to work taxonomically with a little–known group of attractive organisms, in the fashion of naturalists and curators of the past. Early observations by F. A. McDermott and H. S. Barber (1910–1951; review in Lloyd 1990) showed possibilities that existed. The renewed discussion of Darwin's sexual selection (Campbell 1972; Otte 1979), with the fresh perspectives for firefly systematics that were revealed (Lloyd 1979) and the Byzantine signal complexities and confusion of the genus Photuris and their interactions with species that occur with them, have sustained pursuit (Barber and McDermott 1951; McDermott 1967; Lloyd 1969a, 1980,1981a,b, 1984a,b, 1986, J. E. Lloyd, taxonomic monograph in preparation).