Circular polarization observed in bioluminescence. Nature 286: 641–642

The chemistry and biology of firefly luminescence has been studied intensively (1). However, to date no detailed analysis of the polarization of bioluminescence in vivo has been performed (2). The present study describes some obser-vations concerning the intensity of circularly polarized bioluminescence. It was found that left and right lanterns of live larvae of the fireflies Photuris Lucicrescens and Photuris Versicolor emit respectively left and right circu-larly polarized light. Measurements of the total light emission from both lanterns of the larvae (Fig. 1) gave puzzling and disappointing results. Constant results were obtained when the left and right lanterns were measure