Anyone else walk into the fish store and suddenly feel like handing over their wallet for a new tank?

Checking out the Duluth, MN aquarium before #JMIH!

RT @kunhm: We're hiring! 🎉. The KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum is seeking applications for a full-time Museum Educati….

That’s one plump soldierfish.

RT @FishInTheNews: New study - A total-evidence phylogenetic approach to understanding the evolution, depth transitions, and body-shape cha….

RT @AndrejSpiridon4: Reminder, that we still have a vague understanding of the anatomy of the vast majority of animals, even charismatic on….

9/11 Finally, for some cool morphology, we identified new traits to help diagnose monkfishes (Lophiidae), including larval elongated dorsal and pelvic fin elements, and we show that hinged teeth are a shared derived trait of all anglerfishes.

8/11 We used geometric morphometrics to explore how depth transitions affect body form in anglerfishes. Frogfishes (Antennariidae) and deep-sea ceratioids (Ceratioidei) have the highest body shape disparity, despite living in vastly different environments.

7/11 Our character state reconstructions show independent deep-water transitions in monkfishes and batfishes, and a deep-sea invasion in coffinfishes and ceratioid anglerfishes, with ceratioids anglers also moving to pelagic environments.

6/11 We revise frogfish taxonomy by consolidating proposed frogfish families as subfamilies within Antennariidae and introduce a new subfamily, Fowlerichthyinae. This revision provides taxonomic stability while enhancing clarity for researchers, conservationists, and divers.

5/11 In our morphological analysis, we found several features that were once thought to distinguish these groups, like restricted gill openings, absence of ribs, anal spines, and certain cranial bones, are actually shared characteristics between these two groups!

4/11 We found strong support that anglerfishes are monophyletic and are sister group to the Tetraodontoidei (pufferfishes + triggerfishes), not the toadfishes as traditionally thought.

3/11 To study their evolutionary history, we combined newly sequenced UCEs, mitochondrial genomes, and 100 morphological characters across all major anglerfish lineages.

2/11 Anglerfishes are famous for their remarkable hunting strategy, which employs a modified dorsal-fin spine used as a lure! This group also has bizarre adaptations including “pseudowalking,” bioluminescence lures, and parasitic sexual dimorphism!

@Bathypterois @fishphylogeny @stcloudstate @kunhm @KUbiology @PLOSONE 11/11 Natural history collections like @kunhm, @NHMLA, and @FieldMuseum, where many anglerfishes in this study were examined, are vital to advancing our understanding of biodiversity. Publicly funded research and collections like these make this work possible.

10/11 A huge thanks to my coauthors @Bathypterois and @fishphylogeny, and to @stcloudstate, @kunhm, and @KUbiology for their support. I’m also grateful to the museum staff and collections, as well as the reviewers and editors at @PLOSONE for helping bring this work to fruition.

9/11 Finally, for some cool morphology, we identified new traits to help diagnose monkfishes (Lophiidae), including elongated dorsal and pelvic fin elements, and we show that hinged teeth are a shared derived trait of all anglerfishes.

8/11 We used geometric morphometrics to explore how depth transitions affect body form in anglerfishes. Frogfishes (Antennariidae) and deep-sea ceratioids (Ceratioidei) have the highest body shape disparity, despite living in vastly different environments.

7/11 Our character state reconstructions show independent deep-water transitions in monkfishes and batfishes, and a deep-sea invasion in coffinfishes and ceratioid anglerfishes, with ceratioids anglers also moving to pelagic environments.

6/11 We revise frogfish taxonomy by consolidating proposed frogfish families as subfamilies within Antennariidae and introduce a new subfamily, Fowlerichthyinae. This revision provides taxonomic stability while enhancing clarity for researchers, conservationists, and divers.