The adult life is very short which is why reproduction is essential,once the female mates and lays her eggs she dies. These are great to have around the garden as during the larvae stage they eat slugs and snails and even have poison to kill them. I also took a quick video of her glowing, followed by a shot with the phone light on her. The brighter the light the more chance of a male selecting her.Īrmed with just my mobile phone, here is a photo of her, I returned her to her spot and she lit back up again. Using bioluminescence, they sit still with their light glowing pointing upwards to attract the male. Only the males take the form of beetles and have the ability to fly, the females remain in almost larvae form.

The European Glow-worm is a species of Firefly which are actually Beetles. Tonight, a female was proudly displaying her lights to attract a male. It was given the genus name (meaning 'spider-worm') on the basis of its building a silk nest and using silk threads to capture prey.The European Glow-worm (Lampyris noctiluca) is fairly common here in the hills, we see many of the males as they are sometimes attracted by artificial lights. In 1924, it was placed within a new genus of its own, Arachnocampa, because the wing venation of the adults and the behaviour of the larvae differed significantly from other Bolitophila fly species. The species was first formally described in 1891 with the species name Bolitiphila luminosa and was assigned to the family Mycetophilidae. At first it was thought to be related to the European glowworm beetle ( Lampyris noctiluca) but, in 1886, a Christchurch teacher showed it was a larva of a gnat, not a beetle. The first written record of the species dates from 1871 when it was collected from a gold mine in New Zealand's Thames region. Its Māori name is titiwai, meaning 'projected over water'. The species is known to dwell in caves and on sheltered banks in native bush where humidity is high.

In New Zealand and Australia, glow-worms are the larvae (maggots) of a special kind of fly known as a fungus gnat. In the northern hemisphere the name is used for beetles that fly around at night with their tail-lights flashing. The larval stage and the imago produce a blue-green bioluminescence. Light organ What is a glow-worm None of the world’s glow-worms are true worms. Arachnocampa luminosa - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaĪrachnocampa luminosa (Skuse, 1891), commonly known as New Zealand glowworm or simply glowworm, is a species of fungus gnat endemic to New Zealand.

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