Glow-in-the-Dark Diversity

The expensive word for living things that glow in the dark, producing their own light, is bioluminescence. One creature that many people know is the "firefly" or "lightning bug", but both words are incorrect, they are bioluminescent beetles. But that term isn't as much fun, is it? Cowboys in Texas can see them, but riding north, they're harder to find west of Kansas. Sure is fun to see fields full of them.

"Firefly" image by suphakit73 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There are other things that give off their own light, and they're in a variety of shapes and places. Certain kinds of mushrooms, jellyfish, the glowworm, certain sharks, bobtail squid, dinoflagellates (plankton that light up the ocean), and a passel of other things. Some use their glow for mating, others for hunting, and some for defense. Then there are some things that glow and nobody can figure out why. Insects like green, by the way. 

Bioluminescence is baffling to Darwinists because it occurs without rhyme or reason in so many living things. The meaningless catch-all story is "convergent evolution", an explanation that is no explanation at all. Fact is, the diversity, functionality in many cases, beauty of it — this shows the Creator's handiwork in action.

With the coming of night in Brazil’s Coconut Forest, bioluminescent mushrooms dial up their green glow. They attract insects that can carry spores far and wide under the nearly windless canopy. Until recently many scientists thought their dim glow was a random byproduct of mushroom metabolism, related perhaps to the digestion of decaying wood. “Circadian Control Sheds Light on Fungal Bioluminescence” published in Current Biology, however, offers the first solid evidence that mushroom bioluminescence is regulated and purposeful.

You can read the rest of this glowing report about mushrooms and several other creatures by clicking on "God’s Design for Bioluminescence".

   



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