Think anglerfish are weird? Wait until you hear how they evolved

Enlarge this image Humans have been fascinated by the anglerfish for a long time (check out this engraving from 1893). But how did this deep sea predator first evolve? New research sheds light on the bathypelagic fish’s evolutionary history. Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Getty Images Humans have been fascinated by the anglerfish for a long time (check out this engraving from 1893). But how did this deep sea predator first evolve? New research sheds light on the bathypelagic fish’s evolutionary history. Getty Images Most undergrads don’t get the chance to work with museum-preserved specimens of deep sea anglerfish. Then again, Rose Faucher isn’t most undergrads. “The fish world is actually pretty small, and it feels kind of like everybody knows everybody,” says Faucher, who graduated from Rice University recently with her bachelor’s degree in cell biology and genetics. “They’ll FedEx you a fish that has been sitting in a jar since like 1965 … and you get to open up a package in lab one day, and you’re holding one of the rarest fish on earth.” One particular unboxing of a footballfish — a bulbous, prickly-skinned fish with needle-sharp teeth and a stalk-like lure on its head — was especially memorable. “I was so excited, I [picked it up] and ran down the halls of this building to go and show all of my friends that I had a football fish,” she says. Sponsor Message Her friends, she says, were considerably less excited about the find. “I’m sure it’s shocking to hear, but 60 year old fish sitting in ethanol do have a particular smell about them.” Faucher handled these fish as part of a larger research project on the evolution of bathypelagic anglerfish, led by ichthyologist Elizabeth Miller. Miller, whose project was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, built a family tree using genetic information from hundreds of samples and anglerfish specimens across the globe. “The most surprising [part of this study] was the overall story that the bathypelagic anglerfish seem to have arisen from a deep sea benthic ancestor,” Miller says. “And it was this transition off the sea floor … that seems to have spurred all of this morphological diversity.” There are over 200 species of deep-sea anglerfish; some are long and thin, like eels, some are squat and round, some have fins that they use to “walk” along the sea floor, and others have huge eyes set far back into their heads. The family tree that Miller and Faucher built indicates that this variety in shape and size exploded after the anglerfish left the sea floor, and that new ecological opportunities may have spurred them to do so. Sponsor Message “What we’re learning from … the evolutionary history of the anglerfish, is that [the deep sea] also might be a place where you can evolve a lot of biodiversity,” says Miller. “And that’s a totally new way of looking at that environment.” Want to know more about the deep sea, or the creatures that lurk there? Let us know by emailing [email protected]! Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave. This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn. It was edited by Berly McCoy. Tyler Jones checked the facts.