. The Biological bulletin. Biology; Zoology; Marine biology. 482 JAAIES CASE AND M. S. TRIXKLE attempted to further assess the role of the testis by electrical stimulation of a freshly excised pair of Photuris testes in a saline drop directly in contact with the light organ tissue of a spontaneously flashing male Photuris. Inhibition of flashing was not observed. Next a more general experiment was conducted to determine if any structures other than CNS and light organ were involved in photic inhibition. The light organ of a spontaneously flashing male Photuris was dissected in such a way that
. The Biological bulletin. Biology; Zoology; Marine biology. 482 JAAIES CASE AND M. S. TRIXKLE attempted to further assess the role of the testis by electrical stimulation of a freshly excised pair of Photuris testes in a saline drop directly in contact with the light organ tissue of a spontaneously flashing male Photuris. Inhibition of flashing was not observed. Next a more general experiment was conducted to determine if any structures other than CNS and light organ were involved in photic inhibition. The light organ of a spontaneously flashing male Photuris was dissected in such a way that its only connection with the remainder of the animal was by way of the ventral nerve cord. In this state, photic inhibition of spontaneous flashing was still Figure 6. Experiment to measure diffusion time of nor-epinephrine between light organs of two fireflies with body cavities joined (see text). Lower trace records rise of luminescence, superimposed upon spontaneous flashing, upon injection at mark from rest luminescent level, r. Upper trace records luminescence from the other member of the pair. Beginning at x, the photomultipliers were turned off during visual confirmation of integrity of saline linkage. By the time recording resumed the second animal had commenced to glow, indicating arrival of nor-epinephrine and leaving the interval terminated at x, 80 seconds, as the minimum diffusion time. Time mark, 30 sec. Discussion These data, along with the observations of Case and Buck (1963), Magni (1967) and Brunelli et al. (1968a, 1968b), are unfortunately subject to more than one interpretation. When one especially considers the evidence of Carlson (1961) that neural activity exerts a trophic as well as excitatory effect on the lantern, together with the observations concerning the difficulty of "arousing" flashing behavior in fireflies during the day (Case and Buck, 1963), it would seem plausible to propose two flash-suppressing phenomena, both of whi
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