Lightfishes are small stomiiform fishes in the family Phosichthyidae[1][2]
The earliest fossils of lightfishes are from Oligocene-aged Paratethyan marine strata in the Czech Republic.[3]
They are very small fishes found in oceans throughout the world: most species grow no longer than 10 cm, while those in the genus Vinciguerria only reach 4 cm or so.
They make up for their small size with abundant numbers: Vinciguerria is thought — with the possible exception of Cyclothone — to be the most abundant genus of vertebrates. Deep-sea trawls of the Humboldt Current in the southeast Pacific have found that lightfishes make up 85% by mass of mesopelagic fishes, with Vinciguerria lucetia by far the most numerous species.[4]
They are bioluminescent fishes, possessing rows of photophores along their sides, with which they hunt planktonic invertebrates, especially krill, copepods, and planktonic amphipods.[5]
^Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds. (2006). "Phosichthyidae" in FishBase. January 2006 version.
^"Phosichthyidae". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved 29 March 2006.
^Nazarkin, Mikhail V.; Nam, Gi-Soo (2022-01-02). "A Miocene lightfish Vinciguerria sp. (Stomiiformes: Phosichthyidae) from the North-West Pacific with notes on the recent evolution of the genus". Historical Biology. 34 (1): 102–107. doi:10.1080/08912963.2021.1900839. ISSN 0891-2963. S2CID 233709473.
^R. Cornejo, R. Koppelmann & T. Sutton. "Deep-sea fish diversity and ecology in the benthic boundary layer".
^Carmo, Vanda; Sutton, Tracey; Menezes, Gui; Falkenhaug, Tone; Bergstad, Odd Aksel (2015-01-01). "Feeding ecology of the Stomiiformes (Pisces) of the northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge. 1. The Sternoptychidae and Phosichthyidae". Progress in Oceanography. 130: 172–187. doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2014.11.003. ISSN 0079-6611.
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