Wednesday June 18, 2025
EurekAlert! —
New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History sheds light on the ancient origins of biofluorescence in fishes and the range of brilliant colors involved in this biological phenomenon. Detailed in two complementary studies recently published in Nature Communications and PLOS One, the findings suggest that biofluorescence dates back at least 112 million years and, since then, has evolved independently more than 100 times, with the majority of that activity happening among fish that live on coral reefs.
The new work also reveals that in marine fishes, biofluorescence—which occurs when an organism absorbs light, transforms it, and emits it as a different color—involves a greater variety of colors than previously reported, spanning multiple wavelengths of green, yellow, orange, and red.
“Researchers have known for a while that biofluorescence is quite widespread in marine animals, from sea turtles to corals, and especially among fishes,” said Emily Carr, a Ph.D. student in the Museum’s Richard Gilder Graduate School and the lead author on the two new studies. “But to really get to the root of why and how these species use this unique adaptation—whether for camouflage, predation, or reproduction—we need to understand the underlying evolutionary story as well as the scope of biofluorescence as it currently exists.”