January 20, 1981

JUST as visitors flying into New York are often dazzled by the city's flickering lights on a clear night, so have scientists been fascinated and perplexed by the dim glows and multicolored lights produced by an enormous variety of animals in forests, in caves and in the ocean depths. From studies on the common lightning bugs captured by many a child on a warm summer night to the elusive ''flashlight fish'' of tropical waters, insect specialists, biochemists and other scientists have gained new insights into this light-producing ability, known as bioluminescence, furthering their understanding of animal and insect communication. Oceans are the home for many of the world's luminous creatures, which use the trait in a variety of ways. For example, several species of shrimp can regulate their bioluminescence, depending on the water temperature and color, to disguise their predator-tempting silhouettes. And several kinds of squid squirt out bioluminescent ''ink'' to confound predators while they swim to safer parts.

For the tens of thousands of supporters of President-elect Ronald Reagan who are in the Capital today, the inauguration of the 40th President of the United States amounts to much more than a change of administrations and a shift in philosophy of government. For many of them, Mr. Reagan's swearing-in at noon tomorrow means an end to years of waiting for the triumph of a politician and a cause they have followed with devotion through a long series of setbacks. For the Reagan faithful, not even the prospect of an inauguration upstaged by events in Iran can detract from the sweetness of a ceremony that, for the first time, will take place on the western side of the Capitol - facing the vast region from which the President-elect drew both his original support and a set of political ideas rooted in the values of the American frontier. Yet if this inauguration represents the end of a long wait for the Reagan camp, it also marks the high point of a political journey that began, by Mr. Reagan's reckoning, over 35 years ago in the unlikeliest of settings - aboard a rented motor boat on Lake Arrowhead in the San Gabriel Mountains of California.

What do you do after you've had a high-paying job directing 12,000 employees, managing an annual budget of more than $5 billion, and formulating national regulatory policy, and are suddenly out of work? The answer isn't obvious for Barbara Blum, who had the above credentials as deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency, or for many others among the 600 women who were political appointees of the Carter Administration. All of them will be ''out on the concrete'' today, as Mrs. Blum put it in a recent interview, and most are finding it harder to find jobs than they had expected, particularly in business. The Carter men are not having that easy a time of it either. One high official, who attended a farewell party for Stuart E. Eizenstat last week, said that most of the people attending still had not found jobs. ''Everyone was asking, 'What are you going to do?' and everyone was answering, 'I haven't decided yet,''' she said.

American banks holding frozen Iranian assets denied yesterday that they were responsible for a negotiating snag that delayed the release of the American hostages. Spokesmen for the banks denied an Iranian assertion that the banks had sought to deny Iran any of its ''rightful claims'' or were otherwise responsible for thwarting the release of the hostages at the last minute. And they indicated willingness to meet the objections, as they understood them, of the Iranians, if they they did not go deeper than they seemed to yesterday. According to a report by the official Iranian press agency, Iran's chief negotiator for the hostage issue contended yesterday morning that the American banks had presented an 11-page appendix to an agreement that had been reached early Sunday morning.

''I think there will be a concern that all of us will feel until we know they're airborne, actually on their way, in view of the history of this whole thing.