Not sure how many of these I'll be able to do, but I really wanted to draw at least one thing for @montereybayaquarium and @mbari-blog 's Deep Sea December! Ended up doing day 11: Precious (even though it's a bit late lol).
I have always had a deep appreciation for very small organisms, so I chose to portray how precious they feel to me. They're so marvelously intricate, I find them deeply charming and awe-inspiring. So, here's a bunch of little guys! Not size accurate unfortunately.
If anyone's curious as to who all I drew, look here:
(The teeny fellas that aren't labelled are miscellaneous plankton)
More bug questions (but also bacteria) what's up with bioluminescence??? Like I know with lightning bugs it's a mating thing, but what about glow worms, or those bacteria in the ocean that make it light up nuclear blue sometimes??? Like what's up with that???????
Lots of reasons! (Yes, Wiki links, I know--check the sources!)
Sometimes, for the same reason predatory fungus gnat larvae (and bug zappers) luminesce--to attract prey! Like flying insects, deep sea organisms orient themselves by the light filtering down from above. Many pelagic organisms make a nightly journey to the surface. So, like insects, they'll go toward the light.
Because it looks like the lights from the surface, it can also be used as camouflage.
They might also bioluminesce to make themselves a flashlight. Red light cannot penetrate deep below the water's surface, so many ocean animals are blind to it. An animal that casts its own red light, and is the only animal around that can see that red light, can see in what would be darkness to everyone else. Such is the method of the loosejaw.
Other animals, like vampire squids and bomber worms, emit a dazzling display of blinding bioluminescence to disorient predators.
We spotted this Vampire squid recently in the Gulf of Mexico during one of our dives studying deepwater coral with ECOGIG. With a Latin name
The midnight zone is a world of total darkness where predators lurk in the shadows ready to pounce on prey. The small bomber worm (Swima spp
That said, some deep sea animals *do* bioluminesce for mating displays! Some ostracods, for instance.
When sparks fly, new species follow.
Symbiotic bacteria luminesce because their host relies on it, and they rely on their host staying alive. As for why non-symbiotic bacteria luminesce...well, it depends on the bacteria, and apparently we're still not sure. One hypothesis is that it helps mitigate oxidative stress.
