Abstract
As the dragon fish Malocosteus niger cruises the ocean depths searching for food, it flashes a red light invisible to most sea creatures. Marine biologists think this rare red bioluminescence serves as a sniper scope that lets the black, toothy fish illuminate its prey without being seen by other deep-sea animals. And it may allow the fish to communicate with other members of its family without outsiders tuning in. But the visual pigments in M. niger's retina aren't sensitive enough to longwavelength light for the fish to be able to see its own far-red bioluminescence— clearly an unlikely and unsatisfactory setup, says Julian C. Partridge, research fellow at the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, Bristol, England. However, he and his coworkers have found that the fish has other retinal pigments, derived from chlorophyll, that absorb the far-red wavelengths and then pass the light signal on to the visual pigments [ Nature , 393 , 423 (1998)]. ...
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