A re-examination of firefly bioluminescence has revealed that the efficiency of light generation in fireflies is actually less than half the widely accepted value. The study also casts doubts over the mechanism that determines the colour of the emission.
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Nikolaevna Ugarova, N. Fireflies revisited. Nature Photon 2, 8–9 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2007.259
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2007.259