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© Bernd Schöllhorn and Serge Berthier
By David Shultz
One of the brightest green glows in the animal kingdom, according to a new study, doesn’t come from a firefly or a deep-water fish, it radiates from the nests of the Asian wasp.
The light (pictured) appears to come from silk proteins woven into cocoons by wasp larvae (genus Polistes). With just an ultraviolet (UV) lamp in hand, it can be seen up to 20 meters away, report researchers today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
The glow can serve as a guiding signal to help the diurnal wasps find their way back to the nest at dawn and dusk, a time when there is some UV light from the sun, but the environment is still mostly dark. . Like most animals, Polistes have vision optimized to see certain wavelengths of light, and one of those peaks is at 540 nanometers, which is the green glow emitted by the cocoons.
Another possibility is that the fluorescent proteins protect the developing larvae by absorbing harmful UV rays from the sun and thus preventing them from entering the cocoon. Fluorescence could also be useful in helping larvae develop: the researchers point out that many Polistes the species thrive during the rainy season in the jungle when the weather is often foggy or cloudy. The extra green light, they say, could be used to bolster the day-night cycle, which can be crucial for good development – a sort of cocoon solar lamp for bleak jungle days.
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