When organisms biofluoresce, they absorb light, convert it, and send it back out as a different color.

 

“We’ve long known about biofluorescence underwater in organisms like corals, jellyfish, and even in land animals like butterflies and parrots, but fish biofluorescence has been reported in only a few research publications,” said study author John Sparks, a curator in the American Museum of Natural History’s Department of Ichthyology. “This paper is the first to look at the wide distribution of biofluorescence across fishes, and it opens up a number of new research areas.”