Humpback Anglerfish

• GeneralThe female fishes with a glowing lure; the male is a tenth her size and does not hunt.
• reproducciónThe males, far smaller than the females, attach to them only temporarily to mate, without fusing.
• The light of the lure is not produced by the fish: it comes from bioluminescent bacteria housed in the bulb, which the anglerfish feeds and whose light it can control.
• In this species the male attaches to the female only temporarily and lets go again, unlike other deep-sea anglerfish in which the fusion is permanent and lifelong.
• Its stomach is so elastic that it can swallow prey larger than itself, a decisive advantage where food turns up only every several days.
• The male measures about 3 cm and the female up to 18: one of the most extreme cases of sexual dimorphism known.
• It can swallow prey larger than itself. A specimen of 6.6 cm had a viperfish of about 24 cm in its stomach.
• Its luminous lure does not glow on its own: the light is produced by symbiotic bacteria housed in the esca, the bulb at the tip of the rod.
• The bacterium was thought to depend entirely on the fish, because its genome is reduced to half that of a free-living bacterium. Later analyses showed the symbiosis is facultative: each can survive without the other.
• It is oviparous and its eggs float in gelatinous rafts; the larvae live in the top 100 m before descending.
• It owes its name to James Yate Johnson, the British naturalist who discovered it in Madeira.

Skeleton type

Vertebrate - internal bony skeleton (bony fish)

Habitat and environment

The bathypelagic zone (1,000-4,000 m)

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Melanocetus johnsonii