Something I should note is the bioluminescence trail was a suggestion from ChatGPT, and since this post I have done research and haven’t been able to find any sources. The closest thing I have found is that some animals produce a bioluminescent mucus that they use to coat predaters.
I will edit return if I can find a source for the trails.
Edit: I have not found anything about trails, but I have found another potential use for the organelle. According to a theory by Rees et al the predecessor to bioluminescence was to protect “oceanic organisms from potentially deleterious reactive oxygen species”. I’m not completely sure what this means, but it appears to have something to do wit protection from high concentrations of oxygen. So maybe, the microbe stage part that will later become bioluminescence can be used to lower the cells oxygen levels or give it a survival threshold in high oxygen patches. I’m not sure how it would be useful, but maybe when the great oxygenation even is implemented, it will gain a use.
Here is the quote from Wikipedia:
Rees et al. use evidence gathered from the marine luciferin coelenterazine to suggest that selection acting on luciferins may have arisen from pressures to protect oceanic organisms from potentially deleterious reactive oxygen species (e.g. H2O2 and O2− ). The functional shift from antioxidation to bioluminescence probably occurred when the strength of selection for antioxidation defense decreased as early species moved further down the water column. At greater depths exposure to ROS is significantly lower, as is the endogenous production of ROS through metabolism.
Just found a video that explains this theory. Most of it goes over my head, but I think it delivers it’s point.
