Anglerfish entered the midnight zone 55 million years ago and thrived by becoming sexual parasites

Anglerfish first colonized the ocean's midnight zone 55 million years ago, during a period of extreme global warming, a new study finds. The bizarre fish adapted to thrive in the deep sea by becoming sexual parasites, the researchers said.

A new study, published Jan. 15 on the preprint server BioRxiv, suggests anglerfish of the group Ceratioidea colonized the midnight zone during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which occurred 55 million years ago and lasted for around 200,000 years. The event wiped out numerous deep-sea organisms and likely opened up new ecological niches. And ceratioid anglerfish, it appears, were primed to take advantage of them thanks to a set of unique adaptations, the researchers revealed.

"What we found is that they went into the deep ocean, much like whales going back into the ocean from walking ancestors," lead author Chase Brownstein, a first year graduate student at Yale, told Live Science."Anglerfish just did it in reverse. They were walking on the ocean floor and they went back up into the water column."

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