ArticlePNAS nexus2024
Firefly toxin lucibufagins evolved after the origin of bioluminescence.
Article in PNAS nexus, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modeling the Evolution of Collective Synchrony.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Genomic basis of adaptation to cardiac glycosides in three insect orders.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Article
- The Source of Firefly Chemical Defenses: Endogenous Biosynthesis of Lucibufagins from Cholesterol.ACS omega · 2025Article
- A light in the dark: a mid-Cretaceous bioluminescent firefly with specialized antennal sensory organs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fireflies were believed to originally evolve their novel bioluminescence as warning signals to advertise their toxicity to predators, which was later adopted in adult mating. Although the evolution of bioluminescence has been investigated extensively, the warning signal hypothesis of its origin has not been tested. In this study, we test this hypothesis by systematically determining the presence or absence of firefly toxin lucibufagins (LBGs) across firefly species and inferring the time of origin of LBGs. We confirm the presence of LBGs in the subfamily Lampyrinae, but more importantly, we reveal the absence of LBGs in other lineages, including the subfamilies of Luciolinae, Ototretinae, and Psilocladinae, two
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