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Published on: October 16, 2015
The light of the firefly under the influence of ethyl acetate
Anurup Gohain Barua1, Subhash Rajbongshi
1Department of Physics, Gauhati University, Guwahati 781 014, India. agohainbarua@yahoo.com
Abstract:
When a firefly is made to inhale ethyl acetate vapour, a constant glow appears after a few minutes from its abdominal lantern. This control experiment has been performed by a few workers to record the emission spectrum of the firefly. However, a time-resolved experiment performed by us on this continuous light emitted by the species Luciola praeusta Kiesenwetter 1874 (Coleoptera : Lampyridae : Luciolinae) reveals that it is composed of a continuous train of tiny pulses! The nature of the pulses suggests that an oscillatory chemical reaction continues in the microsecond time scale in the lantern of the anaesthetized firefly.
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