Skip to footer

Tiny sharks glow in the dark ... for camouflage

The smalleye pygmy shark uses light-emitting organs in its belly to actually hide itself from predators, a new study suggests.

|
Julien Claes
The smalleye pygmy shark is one of the world's tiniest sharks, reaching no longer than 8.7 inches.

Tiny sharks about the size of a human hand have a superpower of sorts: their bellies glow, according to new research that also showed these smalleye pygmy sharks use the glow to hide from predators lurking below.

Scientists had proposed the smalleye pygmy shark (Squaliolus aliae) sported light-emitting organs called photophores for use in camouflage, but that was never really tested, said study researcher Julien Claes of the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium. "It wasn't even known if these organs were really functional, able to produce light," Claes added.

The small shark, which reaches a maximum length of just 8.7 inches (22 centimeters), lives well below the water surface in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. The new research, detailed this week in The Journal of Experimental Biology, suggests their glowing bellies (a type of bioluminescence) would replace the downwelling light from the sun, or the moon and stars, that is otherwise absorbed by their bodies.

For the study, Claes and his colleague Jérôme Mallefet, along with Hsuan-Ching Ho from the National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan, captured 27 adult, smalleye pygmy sharks off the coast of Taiwan and brought them to the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium. In the lab, the scientists took skin samples from the sharks and tested how they responded to various chemicals known to trigger biological processes such as light production. Sure enough, melatonin caused the shark's skin to glow; neurotransmitters known to regulate light production in deep-sea bony fish had no effect on the pygmy's skin. When the team added the hormone prolactin to the samples, the glow faded. [Bioluminescence Quiz: Do You Know About Glow?]

In lantern sharks, prolactin triggers 30-minute-long bursts of light, which the sharks likely use for various means of communication. Lantern sharks use melatonin to trigger a constant belly glow used in camouflage.

The difference between the two sharks, with the pygmy shark only able to produce a constant glow, Claes said, suggests the smalleye pygmy relies on its glow for camouflage, but not communication as the lantern shark does.

The researchers also suggest both sharks evolved this ability from an ancient organism that would have used these hormones to change their skin pigmentation from light to dark (or vice versa) as a form of camouflage. So while melatonin would've lightened the skin of this predecessor, prolactin would have darkened it. Today, these hormones would work as a type of pigment shade, either moving the pigment cells in front of the light-emitting organs (covering them up) or retracting them to expose the glow. Essentially, the sharks now regulate their bioluminescence by changing the degree of pigmentation covering the photophores.

In the smalleye pygmy shark, prolactin pulls the pigment shade over the photophores to dim the glow, while lantern sharks seem to have co-opted this mechanism to produce brighter and shorter bursts of light for communication. As such, Claes and his colleagues suggest the pygmy shark is more closely related to this ancestor than the lantern shark.

"This study is really interesting because it suggests the pygmy shark to be the missing link in the evolution of luminescence in sharks," Claes told LiveScience.

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Tiny sharks glow in the dark ... for camouflage
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0426/Tiny-sharks-glow-in-the-dark-for-camouflage
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe