The Habitat Management and Food Preference of an Aquatic Firefly, Luciola ficta (Coleoptera: Lampyridae)

• Main Authors: Shu-Dan Yeh, 葉淑丹
• Other Authors: Ping-Shih Yang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 1999
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/39527779083577725299

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 昆蟲學研究所 === 87 === Study on ecology of aquatic firefly, Luciola ficta Olivier, were carried out in the field and the laboratory. The fireflies were reintroduced in the Hu-Shan Creek, Taipei by means of reconstructing their habitat and releasing their larvae to establish its population and restore its habitat. Seven hundred larvae of the 3rd ~ 5th instars were released in a runnel aside the Creek, on Feb. 22th, 1998, and the numbers of larvae were monitored weekly. The numbers of adults were estimated daily by mark-recaptured method from April 16th to April 23th. The estimated number of adults reached maximum (44) on April 18th. The females were observed to lay eggs on the bryophytes. The laid eggs hatched, and these larvae perhaps grew up to adults in the field, but didn''t last to the next generation. Water pollution, habitat destruction, and streetlight were regarded as the major reasons that the fireflies were unable to establish their population. In the laboratory experiments, beside the growth of head capsule width between each larval instar corresponded to Dyar''s rule, the growth of the head capsule length and the length and width of prontum were examined to correspond to Dyar''s rule. The larval instar could be recognized by the morphological difference among each larval instar and the character that the growth of length and width of head capsule and prontum correspond to Dyar''s rule. In the growth experiment with 12L:12D photoperiod at 25℃, each of the developmental time from 1st to 6th instar larvae were 26.1 ± 0.6, 25.0 ± 1.1, 36.3 ± 1.2, 45.7 ± 2.6, 61.3 ± 2.5, and 52.4 ± 6.9 days, respectively. On the food preference of the 6th instar larvae, the larvae collected from rice field in Nan-Kang preferred the tadpole of Rana latouchii to freshwater snail of Sinotaia quadrata and fish of Rhinogobius brunneus. The larvae collected from two places showed no significant differences in feeding proportion among six freshwater snail species without shell. The shell width and length of the freshwater snails caught by the 6th instar larvae were from 1.6 to 2.4 mm and 2.8 to 10.9 mm, respectively. In another experiment, larvae showed no feeding preference among five species of freshwater snails. The factors that effected the larvae preyed on the freshwater snails depended on the body size of snails rather than the species.