BUZZWORDS
Grotto Glow
May Berenbaum
've
only been to the state of Arkansas once
in my life-I spent the bulk of the summer
of 1974 in Fayetteville-but
that one visit
I
at the University of Arkansas campus.
Devil's Den State Park is at least part of
the reason that, when I traveled to Austra-
has had a lifelong impact on me. I don't mean
lia in 1999, I didn't avail myself of one of
the fact that I now have to cart around a red
two-pound candle shaped like a razorback
hog every time I change residences (I'm still
not sure why I bought it back then and I
really don't know why I've kept it all this
time). Rather, I mean the raging claustrophobia that I contracted while I was there. I
ended up in Fayetteville that summer as a
student member of a research team charged
with conducting an ecological inventory of
Devil's Den State Park. Devil's Den, in the
Boston Mountain section of the Ozarks in
the northwest corner of the state, was of ecological interest because it lay directly in the
path of a proposed highway project (an expansion of Interstate 71).
Our team was supposed to inventory the
animal and plant life in the park, paying particular attention to whether any rare or endangered species might be in residence. I was
designated the team's invertebrate biologist
despite the fact that the sum total of my experience consisted of exactly one course in
terrestrial arthropod biology and one semester of a two-semester sequence in invertebrate zoology.
There was yet another reason I was not
exactly prepared for the assignment. Devil's
Den owes its name to the extensive cave system that runs through the park and, of
course, the caves were to be a central focus
of our inventory efforts; caves long have been
known to harbor strange and unusual life
forms. I'd actually never set foot in a cave
before my trip to Arkansas, so to say I was
speleologically challenged is an understatement. The names of the caves we were to
explore didn't exactly inspire confidence. The
state park owes its name to the local legend
that early settlers heard 'the roar of the devil'
in the vicinity; the two major formations in
the park were called Devil's Den and Devil's
Icebox (For the record, in the Ozarks, in
addition to a Den and an Icebox, the Devil
keeps a Kitchen, a Kettle, a Fireplace, a Din-
the more unusual ecotourism opportunities in the world, an opportunity that certainly should have appealed to me as an
entomologist. I did hear a talk about it,
though, at the 1999 Australian National
Congress. The talk, given by Claire Baker
and David Merritt of the Department of Zoology and Entomology at University of
Queensland, detailed the tourist industry
geared around Arachnocarnpa (lava, a cavedwelling fungus gnat maggot that glows in
the dark. A. (lava lives in caves in the rainforests of southeastern Queensland. The
immature stages spin sticky threads that
hang down like fishing lines; the bright bluegreen glow of the larvae apparently attracts
small prey, which get ensnared in the lines
and become paralyzed upon contact with
oxalic acid droplets distributed strategically
along the lines. The maggot then hauls in
the prey and consumes it.
There are a few other spots for viewing
glow-in-the-dark maggots throughout Australia. There's the Glowworm Tunnel in
Lithgow, New South Wales, for example,
where luminous maggots light the ceiling of
an abandoned railway line through the Blue
Mountains constructed for oil shale workers. But the real mecca for watching fungus
gnat maggots glow in the dark, though, is in
neighboring New Zealand, in the Waitomo
Ca ves (http://www.new-zealand.com/
WaitomoCaves/index.html).
Up to 400,000
tourists a year pay $20 (NZ) a piece to travel
by boat through the Glowworm Grotto to
see the luminescent larvae, pupa, adults of
Arachnocarnpa lurninosa. The glow is produced by modified Malpighian tubules in the
last abdominal segment, which lie directly
over a richly trachea ted reflective layer
(Wheeler and Williams 1915). The fungus
gnats apparently put on quite a show, glowing more brightly when fighting amongst
themselves as maggots or when courting and
mating as adults.
4
ing Table, a Punch Bowl, a Sugar Bowl, a
Honeycomb, and a Well; his Toll Booth is
apparently somewhere north in Missouri)
(http://www.uta.fifFASTIUS7/REF/hh-ozark.
html).
It was on my first trip inside one of what
are so aptly called crevice caves there that I
discovered I really can't cope with pitch blackness or narrow spaces that you can't stand
up or turn around in. Because no one else on
the team seemed to be concerned that we
might be buried alive at any minute, I managed to keep my feelings to myself. I struggled
through the entire summer, though, desperately trying to fight back the blind panic I
experienced every time we entered anything
resembling a cave.
There evidently are some unique biological features of the cave system in Devil's Den
State Park. There is, for example, an overwintering site (hibernaculum) for the endangered Ozark big-eared
bat (Plecotus
townsendii ingens), among the rarest bats in
North America. I don't recall ever seeing any
Ozark big-eared bats. I found some kind of
amphipod once in a cave, which I couldn't
identify (I suppose I really should have taken
the second semester of invertebrate zoology,
after all), along with quite a few Polaroid@
film wrappers and some empty beer cans,
but otherwise I really didn't do much to expand the body of knowledge of Ozark cave
biology. So, I didn't have much of an impact
on Arkansas' environment. But the Arkansas environment had a definite impact on
me-by the end of the summer, I was so claustrophobic that I couldn't walk into the elevator in the high-rise dorm where we stayed
AMERICAN
ENTOMOLOGIST
•
Spring 2000
The tourist industry discovered the Glowworm Grotto just about the same time that
the scientific community became aware of
the glowworms therein. The cave was first
explored in 1887 by a local Maori chief, Tane
Tinorau, and a British companion, Fred
Mace, who instantly saw its commercial potential; by 1910, a hotel was built to accommodate the crowds of visitors.
The
entomological community first heard about
the insects in 1886; Meyrich (1886) found
large numbers of sticky, luminous larvae
along a steep creek bank near Auckland and
reported light consisting "of a small, bright,
greenish-white, erect flame, rising from the
hack of the neck." Although he guessed that
they were predaceous, and possibly coleopterous, he was loathe to put a name to
them, claiming that "it is impossible for a
wandering entomologist to attack a larva of
these habits." Subsequent contributors to
Entomologists' Monthly Magazine undertook the task, Hudson (1886) in the process
pointing out that the erect flame rising from
the back of the head was more like a brilliant
gleam arising from "the posterior extremity
of the larva," a detail that is understandable
given the general absence of heads and other
distinctive directional features displayed by
maggots. Osten-Sacken (1886a) was the one
who eventually recognized it as a mycetophi lid fungus gnat and even (Osten-Sacken
1886b) offered free copies of his recently reprinted paper on larvae of Mycetophilidae
to "anyone applying ...for them."
Surprisingly enough, given that there are
only about a dozen species of luminous
mycetophilids in the world, there are a few
glow-in-the-dark species right here in North
America, some of which aren't even too far
from Arkansas. Or(elia (=Platyura) (tl/toni
is a bluish maggot that is found in permanently damp soil in rock crevices or rotten
wood in parts of the southeastern United
States (Fulton 1941). There's even a small
tourist industry just beginning in Alabama
where visitors are invited to come to Dismals
Canyon to see the "dismalites," the glowworm-covered mossy canyons just down
Highway 8 from the town of Phil Campbell
(http://www.dismalscanyon.com). If the state
of Alabama ever needs an environmental
impact statement on improving Highway 8,
I would feel a lot better about going into a
cave or cavern there to look for insects knowing they lit up the place.
Not everybody, though, is as comforted
as I am by the soft glow of arthropod light.
In parts of Thailand, according to Yuswasdi
(1950), many rural people believe "that a
certain luminous myriapod, usually found
in old thatched roofs, and known in Siamese
as Maeng-Kah-Reaung ("luminous insect in
the roof") has the habit of climbing into the
AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST
•
Volume 46, Number 1
ear of sleeping individuals to bore its way
into the brain, where it prefers to dwell. Patients frequently complain of such intrusion,
though no one seems to have actually seen
the creature inside the ear. The chief complaint is an intermittent or continuous ringing in the ear of long duration." I'm not sure
I believe these reports-after
all, a physician
wouldn't even need an otoscope to see a glowworm in a patient's ear so rhe fact that they
haven't yet been spotted leaves room for
skepticism. Moreover, there are two genera
of luminescent millipedes, and the genus
found outside Asia, Motyxia, is reported to
occur in the mountain valleys of California
(Sivinski 1998), where there haven't been
any otherwise inexplicable outbreaks of ringing of the ears. However, maybe I should
keep my phobias down to a manageable
number and just try to avoid thatched houses
in California mountain valleys from now on.
•
Acknowledgments
I thank John M. Sivinski (Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology,
Agricultural Research Service,U.S. Department
of Agriculture, Gainesville, Florida) for helping me locate Yuswasdi (1950) and for letting
me know where to find Siriraj Hospital.
References Cited
Fulton, B. B. 1941. A luminous fly-larva with
spider traits (Diptera: Mycetophilidae). Ann.
Entomol. Soc. Am. 34: 289-302.
Hudson, G. V. 1886. A luminous insect latva in
New Zealand. Enromol. Mon. Mag. 22: 99100.
Meyrick, E. 1886. A luminous insect larva in
New Zealand. Entomol. Mon. Mag. 22: 266267.
Osten-Sacken, C. R. 1886a. A luminous insectlarva in New Zealand. Enromol. Mon. Mag.
23: 133-134.
Osten-Sacken, C. R. 1886b. More about the luminous New Zealand larvae. Entomol. Mon.
Mag. 23: 230-231.
Sivinski, J. M. 1998. Phototropism, bioluminescence, and the Diptera. Fla. Enromol. 81:
292-392.
Wheeler, W. M., and F. X. Williams. 1915. The
luminous organ of the New Zealand glowworm. Psyche 22: 36-43.
Yuswasdi, C. 1950. Tinnitus aurium and the luminous milliped. Siritaj Hosp. Gaz. 2: 194.
May Berenbaum is a professor and head of the Department of Entomology,
University of Illinois, 320
Morrill Hall, 505 South
Goodwin Avenue, Urbana,
IL 61801. Currently, she is
studying the chemical aspects of interaction between herbivorous insects and their hosts.
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