the dark side of the light show predators of fireflies in the great smoky mountains萤火虫的光显示捕食者的阴暗面在大烟山国家公园.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Psyche Volume 2012, Article ID 634027, 7 pages doi:10.1155/2012/634027 Research Article The Dark Side of the Light Show: Predators of Fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains 1 2 ¨ 3 Sara M. Lewis, Lynn Faust, and Raphael De Cock 1 Department of Biology, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155, USA 2 Emory River Land Company, 11828 Couch Mill Road, Knoxville, TN 37932, USA 3 Evolutionary Ecology Group, University of Antwerp, 2610 Antwerp, Belgium Correspondence should be addressed to Sara M. Lewis, sara.lewis@ Received 14 July 2011; Accepted 15 September 2011 Academic Editor: Diana E. Wheeler Copyright © 2012 Sara M. Lewis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. In the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, the Light Show is a popular seasonal attraction created by thousands of courting male Photinus carolinus fireflies (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) that flash in synchrony to locate females. This study was undertaken to provide a temporal snapshot of whether invertebrate predators are active within these dense and conspicuous firefly breeding aggregations. In addition, we examined whether female Photuris fireflies, which are specialist predators on other fireflies, show any feeding preferences within the diverse local firefly fauna. A field survey revealed a surprisingly diverse suite of generalist insectivores feeding on fireflies within P. carolinus breeding aggregations. In addition, laboratory studies revealed major differences in prey con- sumption rates when Photuris predators were gi