The Museum of Nature will feature an exhibit of bioluminescence next year. The exibit will feature wildlife that glows, including fireflies, glowworms and jellyfish.
The Canadian Museum of Nature’s glowing reputation is set to become literal next spring with a planned exhibit featuring creatures that produce their own light.
The exhibit will look at wildlife that glows – including fireflies, glowworms, fluorescent jellyfish and coral. It will focus on how these creatures luminesce and why it helps them in their respective habitats.
“Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence” will come to Ottawa in May, after it leaves the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Field Museum in Chicago. Researchers from these museums and the Museum of Nature collaborated to create the exhibit.
Caroline Lanthier, project manager at the Museum of Nature, says the exhibit took more than three years for researchers to put together and has resulted in a unique, immersive experience.
Visitors will walk through each creature’s environment, starting on land and gradually descending into the deep-sea, she says. Models of bioluminescent creatures will fill each habitat, displaying how they use light to survive in their environment.
Research scientist Bob Anderson specializes in insects at the Museum of Nature. He says most bioluminescent creatures produce light to attract prey or potential mates.
“Fireflies have particular flash patterns for mating purposes,” he explains.
Glowworms luminesce to attract other insects into their dangling webs where they are caught and eaten, he adds. Deep-sea fish also produce light to attract food.
Bioluminescence is a result of particular chemicals that each creature possesses.
Fireflies, for example, create a chemical called luciferin and contain a protein called luciferase. When these substances mix together, the firefly is able to emit light in controlled patterns.
Anderson visited the exhibit in New York City.
He says it broadened his perspective on how many bioluminescent creatures exist and why producing light is significant to their survival.
Ninety per cent of sea animals that live below 700 metres are bioluminescent, according to the American Museum of Natural History.
Walking through each creature’s habitat made the visit very interactive, recalls Anderson.
“I almost felt like I was outdoors.”
Lanthier thinks the exhibit’s ability to immerse visitors into each creature’s environment is the most exciting part of the experience. Not many exhibits try to put people inside of a cave or under the sea, she says.
“Everything will be glowing,” says Lanthier. “We want people to marvel at the beauty of all of it.”
Senior Exhibition Designer Jonathan Ferrabee has to reconfigure the exhibit to fit inside the museum.
The museum’s exhibition building on McLeod Street was completed in 1912. Though recent renovations finished in 2010, exhibit designers still run into assembly problems.
“It’s a typical challenge that we have to fit each exhibit into the unique space we have,” says Ferrabee.
Ferrabee and his team will receive the exhibit in crates from a dozen semi-trailers in March. They will have five weeks to assemble the exhibit.
“Imagine it’s like a massive puzzle,” he says.
Ferrabee has 200 drawings of the exhibit’s blueprints – including graphics, electric lines and information panels.
He has been working on fitting them into the museum since September.
Ferrabee thinks the most interesting part of the exhibit is going to be the content on display.
The museum is trying to bring live flashlight fish from Japan to display in the exhibit. Lanthier does not know whether they will receive some or not, but says live bioluminescent bacteria will be featured.
The exhibit will be appealing for all ages, particularly kids and adults who want to learn more details on these creatures, says Anderson.
He hopes others will have a similar experience as he did which he, appropriately, describes as “enlightening.”