Backyard explorers discovered 15 new examples of glowing life 

This Halloween, it’s time to seem scorpions, millipedes and other creepy crawlers in a fresh light.

Using ultraviolet flashlights and lightweight-filtering glasses, a group of community scientists is documenting flickers of fluorescence in these and other terrestrial creatures. Observations from across the arena have illuminated as a minimum 15 new examples of biofluorescence, biologist Courtney Whitcher and her colleagues report October 24 at bioRxiv.org.

Flashy finds consist of a Japanese beetle with a glowing blue mouth, a mushroom that gleams bright red underneath its cap and a ball python with scale patterns glinting orange. There’s “a glowing world that’s at some stage in us that we just don’t always have the flexibleness to seem,” says Whitcher, of the University of Houston.

Biofluorescence occurs when chemicals inside living organisms soak up light after which emit it at a lower energy. Many animals soak up UV light, for example, and shine out light that’s visible to the human eye (SN: eight/28/24). Scientists have long observed biofluorescence in underwater animals just like corals and fishes. But in terms of terrestrial life, researchers are mostly within the dark.

After scientists reported the first fluorescent frog in 2017, Whitcher began cataloging instances of fluorescence in greater than 150 frog species (SN: eight/13/23). The phenomenon was ubiquitous. She wondered just how a fine deal of life on land was glowing beneath our noses. In 2020, Whitcher’s team created Finding Fluorescence, a web site online where people can upload images of fluorescent geckos, lichen, moths and other critters they’ve discovered.

People can venture out at night and shine a black light of their own backyard, a nearby park and even at houseplants sitting on their windowsill. (Chlorophyll, the pigment that makes plants appear green, fluoresces red below UV light.) The limits are endless, Whitcher says.

Her team analyzed 36 submissions to the website, then dug through the scientific literature to to locate which instances of fluorescence had never been reported. One included a squirrel tree frog striped glimmering green below UV light. Whitcher is now investigating if that fancy stripe influences females’ decision to offer males the green light.

Beyond shedding light on the total spectrum of land animals’ colors, Whitcher hopes the website inspires people of all a long time to hunt for hidden hues. “As kids, we start off with this wonder and curiosity about the arena, and rarely it gets lost,” she says. Finding Fluorescence is a “attributable to bring a choice of that childhood spark back.”