It's Dinner Time!

Adult fireflies typically do not feed, but will ingest pollen and nectar. Female Photuris fireflies are predaceous, and they are guided by their prey’s luminescence and attack flying fireflies at night. The Photuris females will fake the flashes of other females of another genus, Photinus, to lure Photinus males in. These predaceous females are called 'femme fatale.' The Photuris females do this in order to ingest the chemical, lucibufagins, which is toxic. The Photuris fireflies do not originally have this toxin, but Photinus fireflies do. The chemical will protect them from predators because they then taste bad and are toxic to them.



The larvae are predaceous and feed on slugs, snails, earthworms, and other soft bodied organisms. The larvae are able to detect the slime trail of a slug or an earthworm and track it down. Once they have found their prey, they inject a highly toxic digestive substance into their prey that paralyzes them quickly, and they then suck out the liquefied body contents.

Fireflies and their larvae have a complete digestive system where their food is broken down and the nutrients are absorbed. The nutrients are then carried to the different parts of the body via the firefly’s open circulatory system. In an open circulatory system, the blood (usually called hemolymph) flows freely in open body cavities where it makes direct contact with all internal tissues and organs.

On to Reproduction!

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