yes 

This looks like light reflecting from dew drops that the 'hopper is excreting. They do not use bioluminescence, at least nobody has ever confirmed such a thing.

can you say a bit more, harpal?  is there evidence of such a thing in the literature or in your experience?

jernaj, what do you mean by dew drops?   i do have a photo of a leafhopper walking strangely.  when i was cropping it, i saw that it was balancing a large drop of some kind of liquid.  i wonder if that was for another leafhopper or for an ant? 

http://bugguide.net/node/view/1087296

Dear Martha,

I have never heard about bioluminescence in leafhopper. What could be its role in hopper biology?

Maybe it could be reflectance by honeydew or brochosomes.

There is a similar video than yours at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmss1G8gJM0

I hope that a valid explananation will be give by someone to this phenomena.

Julien

That's very interesting, Julien.  The first video showed a white light, this one a red light.  I wonder how to account for that - these videos don't seem to be at all professional - mine are no better - but mine also don't show anything.  I assume this is a female leafhopper since apparently their genitalia are visible - stick out a bit from under the wings.  In the first video I couldn't make out the sex.  I too hope this is a real phenomenon - otherwise it's an interesting folk-meme whose community is VERY small.

Dear Martha,

I also have never heard any reference about bioluminescence in leafhoppers. but an entomologist told me once that he saw bioluminescence in an Orthoptera (grasshopper, I presume) in the Brazilian Amazon forest.

Evoneo Berti-Filho

Hi Evoneo,

That is encouraging news about someone having observed this phenomenon in Orthoptera.  If you are in contact with him/her, it would be convenient to read any papers/other kinds of documentation.  Is this person on Researchgate? 

Also I would like to know if he/she saw the light coming from the same end of the animal as people seem to be seeing in leafhoppers, i.e., from the tip of the abdomen? 

Thanks again for this news! 

Martha

Dear Martha,

Unfortunately my friend entomologist passed away some years ago and I do not know any paper regarding bioluminescence.  However there is a paper on bioluminescence in  cockroachs.  Please see the link below:

http://www.eebweb.arizona.edu/faculty/papaj/Pdfs/GlowRoach.pdf

A big embrace Brazilian style,

Evoneo

thanks evoneo, that is really interesting information.  right now the u. of arizona is sleepy.  but believe me, i am going to keep trying the link you sent. 

so now we have anecdotal evidence of bioluminescence in grasshoppers and a paper on BL in blattidae.  we also have a video of something happening in one kind of leafhopper.  this is getting better and better!  

i really thank you for following up my question.  every time someone takes it seriously enough to answer SOMETHING i feel very gratified.

i don't know about brazilian embraces but i visited portugal many years ago and the hug was very huge and wet.  so the same back to you and :-)

ciaozinhu!

p.s.  i didn't know how to target my question to the right audience.  the first stab didn't seem to go through, and finally i saw how to target it to bioluminescence.  i wonder how to add entomologists, hemiptera, etc to get the question to more people who, even if they don't know anything about this connect, will care enough ( like you) to try to find a path to the answer!

bl

Evoneo,

I was finally able to get into that website - very interesting article.  the cockroaches apparently glow through a device on the front of the head, and the glow lights the rest of the body too to some extent.  This is on p. 1 of the article.  He also lists other insects from that area of the family tree. " If we do not

take into consideration the obscure staphilinid beetle larvae

(Costa et al.

1986

), only three insect groups produce light

(Redfort

1982

, Meyer-Rochow

2007

): (1) elateroid beetles

including alight click beetles, fireflies and peculiar whole

termite nests illuminated by predatory

Pyrearinus termitillu-

minans

larvae; (2) troglobitic fly larvae, with alight insect-

capturing webs and (3) virtually unstudied, the recently dis-

covered adult cockroaches of the genus

Lucihormetica"

.

it would seem that the phenomenon is not restricted to the firefly family.  flies, beetles(including fireflies and also elators, blatts,and their cousins the orthoptera.  When I was a child in the 50's I had found a beetle grub that lit up along the segments - i've always wondered what it was.  It put out a steady glow.  

I've made several videos with my camera but none of them show anything promising. Maybe I need to invest in a good  video camera.  :-)  I still think this could be a good multi-faceted study.  a) determine if the phenomenon is real; b) someone dissect the relevant parts to see how it's done; c) someone find  out what the function is. 

hi D, that is a very interesting video and i would say for now "seeing is believing".  it was very well shot.  here you have two females (did it say when that was happening?)  i have a page on bugguide showing a female walking "downhill" with a bubble of liquid held with her other legs.  oh i remember i posted that photo in this trail of letters.  but that's also where they told me how to spot a female. 

now the interesting question is, what is the liquid for?  i've seen treehoppers leave balls of honeydew (probably for their ant cohorts).  so fascinating.  every day i seem to learn something new and puzzling.  last week i finally found a wasp-mimicking hoverfly, and today a bee- mimic.  i tell you, we should never  die of boredom.  i know i have a photo of a treehopper with a bubble of honeydew just sitting around.  i'll post when i can find it.

thanks again for a slick video with the best answer so far to the original question!

martha

ps.  i also have a weekly  blog on the creatures in my wild yard.  you might find something interesting.  it is not highly technical writing, but to make the readers feel closer to nature. 

http://bugguide.net/node/view/1087296

mokennon.albion.edu/backyardblog.htm

Martha: sorry for the late response, I wasn't checking this thread for a while. Leafhoppers excrete plenty of dew containing water and undigested solubles, especially the xylem feeders who must ingest a lot of water to gather the required nutrients (sap is quite imbalanced in this regard). Some planthoppers have evolved a mutualistic relationship with ants that collect this excretion for the sugars, but for the most part, it's just excretion. As one of the consequences, it causes a lot of problems with mould when you try to rear leafhoppers.

Oh!  so you have reared leafhoppers!  What you say sounds more and more reasonable.  That makes sense.  I still wonder  why mine was carrying that globule so carefully.  I didn't actually see her doing it - the globule didn't wasn't visible to me until I was cropping the day's pictures.  What caught my initial attention was the peculiar way she was walking with it. 

I have had experience with treehoppers (Entylia carinata and what Bugguide calls Enchenopa on-cercis (redbud)- mimic thorns) who have the sap relationship with their ants. But not leafhoppers. And I've never tried to rear them. The thorn bugs live in my redbud tree, and this year (first I've ever seen them) the Entylia appeared on my largest thistle plant. I wonder where they will show up next year - the thistle is biennial and you never know where it will take root. (I do have a healthy first-year one in the front garden.) The last I saw (the thistle died some weeks past) one of the Entylia had moved to another thistle, which is also now defunct. I hope they travel to the farther thistle for next year. (They don't improve the health of the thistle but I find them most interesting. )

Anyway, thanks for your observations.  I'm glad to know another hopper enthusiast.  Some of those leafhoppers look as if they were painted by a design artist.

http://bugguide.net/node/view/1079063

Hi everyone, i have just written up the conclusions of this thread of replies in my weekly blog.  mokennon.albion.edu/backyardblog.htm, mentioning the video posted by D. Brusco and the explanation by Jernej Polajnar - thanks to everyone who wrote.  it was interesting to learn about the other kinds of insects who exhibit bioluminescence - just a step or two up (down?) the tree of insect life from the hemiptera.  This was a great experience of many people, each with his/her own perspective on the problem, getting together to produce an answer!

oh.  that was a response to a post by evoneo - he had sent a link but the host server wasn't serving till the next day.  did you see that i mentioned you by name in blog september 20 (which is up but i am still debugging it  and will send out a notice soon)?

would you like to be on the notification list?  it justs says when a new blog entry is up.

arg, running this blog is practically a full-time job.  i put my language work aside till november.

thanks debbi.  i made the mistake of putting mokennon down as my name in bugguide and now have to write my name after a comment.  don't have to i guess but it seems friendlier that way.  keep in touch, i think i followed you and the others who responded to the initial query.

p.s.  Your name is now Debbi in my blog.  thanks for letting me know.  good thing i had put "one person" instead of "one guy".  :-)