The Physical Relationship between Tracheal and Nervous system in the Lantern of Fireflies

• Main Authors: Hsu, Su-Ting, 徐素婷
• Other Authors: 李家維
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53358301324232550728

碩士 === 國立清華大學 === 分子與細胞生物研究所 === 101 === The reason why fireflies is so attractive is about its beautiful bioluminescence. Firefly bioluminescence is widely discussed among kinds of bioluminescence. Bioluminescence is generated by the particular organ of the fireflies named the lantern or light organ. Previous studies have shown that the tracheas and nerves are important to the Fireflies’ lantern. There are a lot of fine ultrastructure pictures of the Fireflies’ lantern taken by electron microscope. However, we can’t observe the nervous and trachea system directly from those pictures. So we use immunohistochemistry technique to process fireflies（Luciola terminalis ＆ Pyrocoelia analis） light organs, and a laser scanning confocal microscope (LSCM) to understand the spatial relationship between nervous and trachea system in the light organ of fireflies. Insect trachea and muscle were usually discussed at the same time previously and in the previous study showed that insects use muscle contraction to force gas transportation for gas exchange. But in our study, we did not find the muscles distribution around the trachea, only observed the nerve endings in the surrounding tracheoles. We thus suggest that the nerve endings give signals directly to the trachea system to do the flash required gas regulation in the lantern of fireflies.