Sexual Signals Persist over Deep Time: Ancient Co-option of Bioluminescence for Courtship Displays in Cypridinid Ostracods.

Although the diversity, beauty, and intricacy of sexually selected courtship displays command the attention of evolutionists, the longevity of these traits in deep time is poorly understood. Population-based theory suggests sexual selection could either lower or raise extinction risk, resulting in high or low persistence of lineages with sexually selected traits. Furthermore, empirical studies that directly estimate the longevity of sexually selected traits are uncommon.

The relative cost of using luminescence for sex and defense: light budgets in cypridinid ostracods.

Luminescent signals can be used by animals for a number of purposes, including courtship and defense, sometimes by the same individual. However, the relative costs of producing these different behaviors are largely unknown. In the marine ostracod Photeros annecohenae, males utilize extracellular luminescence for complex courtship displays, and both males and females luminesce as a predation defense.

Based on a review of the data, use of the term 'cypridinid' solves the Cypridina/Vargula dilemma for naming the constituents of the luminescent system of ostracods in the family Cypridinidae.

The luciferin of the ostracod Vargula hilgendorfii (formerly Cypridina hilgendorfii) is often termed Cypridina luciferin in the scientific literature, but, to avoid ambiguity and based on a review of the literature, is best referred to by the more inclusive term cypridinid luciferin. This situation exemplifies how new knowledge in systematics and the resulting nomenclatural changes can result in evolutionary insights. Similar solutions can probably be applied to other taxonomic dilemmas.

Darkness as an ecological resource: the role of light in partitioning the nocturnal niche.

Nocturnal behaviors that vary as a function of light intensity, either from the setting sun or the moon, are typically labeled as circadian or circalunar. Both of these terms refer to endogenous time-dependent behaviors. In contrast, the nightly reproductive and feeding behaviors of Vargula annecohenae, a bioluminescent ostracod (Arthropoda: Crustacea) fluctuate in response to light intensity, an exogenous factor that is not strictly time-dependent.

Complex sexual courtship displays by luminescent male marine ostracods.

In the western Caribbean Sea, about an hour after the sun sets, a complex and ritualized light show of precise, vertically placed luminescent pulses erupts over shallow grassbeds. These are among the most complex displays known in marine systems. Displays consist of repeated trains of secreted bioluminescent pulses in a specific pattern ejected into the water column as courtship signals by male Vargula annecohenae, which are small (<2 mm) myodocopid ostracod crustaceans.