After a weekend looking for vagrant fish in the cold waters of Shark Bay (more about that later this week), I came home to find a pleasant email in my inbox. A new publication has been published online last week. This one is in the journal “Coral Reefs” and is about biofluorescence in the Striated Frogfish (Antennarius striatus), more commonly known as the Hairy Frogfish. The article can be found here, but is restricted access. For those of you who cannot access it, here is what it is about.

Hairy Frogfish by day. Photo: Luke Gordon

As I have written previously, I have been doing a fair bit of work looking at biofluorescence in fishes. During these surveys i had noticed something strange going on with the Hairy Frogfish: their bodies are not fluorescent, but their lure is (very strongly). As you might know, frogfish use their lure as a fishing rod, attracting small fish closer, which are then eaten whole. The fact that the Hairy Frogfish’s lure alone is fluorescent but their bodies are not, hints at the possibility that this fluorescence could be used in what is called “aggressive mimicry”. Aggressive mimicry is the term used for animals who pretend to be something harmless (the “model”) and use that to get close enough to eat their prey.

Hairy Frogfish (Antennarius striatus) with fluorescent orange lure

But the question was, what would it be trying to mimic? Are there animals out there that resemble this fluorescent lure? Cue my last Philippines trip. During a nightdive with the unparalleled science hobbit, we found three more Hairy Frogfish (with fluo orange lures). More importantly, we also found a lot of freeswimming worms near them. Most of them a similar size as the lure of the frogfish, AND the same colour fluorescence as those lures. The resemblance between the lures and the worms went further than just size, shape and movement, but also the fluorescence is imitated. We found our model species!

Fluorescent worm (top orange squiggle) and fluorescent lure (bottom orange squiggle)

This is very exciting, as it is the first time anyone found strong indications that biofluorescence might be used to help fish catch prey. To prove whether it is really used to hunt, lab experiments or extensive observations would need to be done to check if this fluorescence really makes a difference. So while this is a very exciting glimpse into an unexplored part of hunting strategies in the ocean, much more work needs to be done to understand all the details.

If you can’t access the article but want to read it, or you just want to know more, send me an email or ask in comments and I can send the publication to you.