Wikipedia
Photuris is a genus of fireflies ( beetles of the family Lampyridae). These are the femme fatale lightning bugs of North America. This common name refers to a behavior of the adult females of these predatory beetles: they engage in aggressive mimicry, imitating the light signals of other firefly species' females to attract, kill, and eat the males. Their flashing bioluminescent signals seem to have evolved independently and eventually adapted to those of their prey, mainly unrelated Lampyrinae, such as Photinus ( rover fireflies) or Pyractomena.
The Pennsylvania lightning bug (P. pensylvanica) is the state insect of Pennsylvania.
Species include:
- Photuris caerulucens – Barber
- Photuris cinctipennis – Barber, 1951
- Photuris congener – LeConte, 1852
- Photuris divisa– LeConte, 1852
- Photuris fairchildi– Barber
- Photuris frontalis – LeConte, 1852
- Photuris lucicrescens – Barber, 1951
- Photuris pensylvanica – De Geer, 1774
- Photuris quadrifulgens
- Photuris tremulans – Barber, 1951
- Photuris versicolor – Fabricius, 1798
There are at least 64 recognized species, all restricted to temperate North America. They mainly occur from the east coast to Texas.
In computer networking, Photuris is a session key management protocol defined in RFC 2522.
Photuris is the Latin name of a genus of fireflies native to North America that mimic the signals of other firefly species. The name was chosen as a reference to the ( classified) FIREFLY key exchange protocol developed by the National Security Agency and used in the STU-III secure telephone, which is believed to operate by similar principles.
Photuris may refer to:
- Photuris (genus), a genus of beetles containing several species of firefly
- Photuris (protocol), a computer networking session key management protocol