{"id":74986,"date":"2019-08-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/scientists-make-first-observation-of-fish-using-bioluminescent-flashes-to-facilitate-schooling\/"},"modified":"2019-08-14T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-14T00:00:00","slug":"scientists-make-first-observation-of-fish-using-bioluminescent-flashes-to-facilitate-schooling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2019\/08\/scientists-make-first-observation-of-fish-using-bioluminescent-flashes-to-facilitate-schooling\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists make first observation of fish using bioluminescent flashes to facilitate \u201cschooling\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2014 Aug. 14, 2019 \u2014 To Brennan Phillips, 溏心vlog免费B站 assistant professor of ocean engineering, it was an unparalleled sight. In the depths of the sea off the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, he and a team of researchers saw what he describes as \u201ca magic carpet of stars.\u201d These \u201cstars\u201d were actually bioluminescent lights emitted from thousands of flashlight fish (<em>Anomalops katoptron<\/em>). The team\u2019s scientific findings demonstrate that the fish synchronize bioluminescent flashes in order to organize as a school in the absence of ambient light.<\/p>\n<p>The study, a collaboration between 溏心vlog免费B站, City University of New York\/Baruch College, American Museum of Natural History, Yale University, and Rice University researchers, reveals a novel function for bioluminescence in ocean waters. It also raises the possibility that fish schooling may occur in the deep sea, where it had been assumed to be too dark for fish to coordinate their movements as a group. The study was published today in the journal <em>PLOS ONE.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"oembed oembed-youtube-com\" style=\"\" data-url=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uVibq7nalXo\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Flash of Insight: Brennan Phillips\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uVibq7nalXo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Through an analysis of field video recordings and modeling, Phillips and the rest of the research team were able to demonstrate that flashlight fish are, in fact, swimming in a well-organized position relative to one another, as opposed to \u201cshoaling,\u201d a looser form of grouping.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_54916\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-54916\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/05\/FTp-1-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-54916 no-hang \" src=\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/wp-content\/uploads\/news\/sites\/16\/2021\/05\/FTp-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Flashlight fish (Anomalops katoptron)\" width=\"450\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-54916\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flashlight fish (Anomalops katoptron).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cFish use light to communicate. This is something we\u2019ve known, but to be able to show that quantitatively, and to share supporting video footage that we were able to get, is remarkable,\u201d said Phillips.<\/p>\n<p>Bioluminescence is the ability of living organisms to generate visible light through organic chemical processes. Flashlight fish, which tend to hide in caves and reef crevasses by day, explore beyond only on moonless nights. The fish have pockets containing bioluminescent bacteria located beneath their eyes, which they are able to manipulate to create flashing patterns.<\/p>\n<p>The research team serendipitously came across a school of thousands of flashlight fish while diving off the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n<p>They collected footage of the school\u2014the largest recorded aggregation of bioluminescent flashlight fish\u2014as part of a 2013 trip, and returned to the remote, uninhabited volcanic island in 2016 and 2019 to gather more data.<\/p>\n<p>Phillips modified a deep-sea low-light camera system so that it could be utilized by scuba divers. \u201cEverything had to come together to get these data\u2014the new camera system, the weather, the divers, and, of course, the fish. It was one of the hardest challenges I have faced as a marine roboticist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To capture footage of the fish\u2019s nighttime behavior in their natural environment, observations had to be made without artificial light. Both divers and a three-person submarine used a suite of low-light cameras, including a custom-built underwater high-speed, high-resolution scientific complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (sCMOS) camera.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat we saw and experienced was truly extraordinary,\u201d said Phillips. Noting the similarity to how fireflies communicate using bioluminescent light, and past research conducted on that topic, he said he hopes that his team\u2019s research will inspire more relating to the flashlight fish, which he calls \u201cthe fireflies of the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Other authors on the study include lead author David Gruber from Baruch College, who also serves as a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History; Rory O\u2019Brien, Ganesh Vasan, Peter O\u2019Brien, and Vincent Pieribone, from the Yale University School of Medicine; and Vivek Boominathan and Ashok Veeraraghavan, from Rice University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2014 Aug. 14, 2019 \u2014 To Brennan Phillips, 溏心vlog免费B站 assistant professor of ocean engineering, it was an unparalleled sight. In the depths of the sea off the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, he and a team of researchers saw what he describes as \u201ca magic carpet of stars.\u201d These [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74988,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-74986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-college-of-engineering"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}