Bioluminescence in the sea

Reviews the distribution, chemistry, function and ecology of light production in the ocean, covering the several chemically distinct luciferins, how often the capacity has arisen independently, and how widespread it is across depth and taxonomic group.

Studied in

Animalia, Bacteria, Eukaryota

Sample size

review across marine bioluminescent taxa

Bioluminescence has evolved independently many times — on the order of forty separate origins — and uses a small number of chemically unrelated luciferins, several of which are acquired through diet rather than synthesised. It is the dominant form of visible signalling in the deep ocean, where the majority of animals in many surveyed groups are luminous.

• Estimates of independent origins depend on where the boundaries of a luciferin system are drawn and are revised as chemistry improves.
• Surveys of what proportion of animals are luminous are biased towards the groups and depths that have been sampled.

• Bioluminescence

  Making light is not one invention. It arose independently something like forty separate times, using several chemically unrelated light-producing molecules — and in the deep ocean most animals in many groups can do it.

• Bioluminescence

  A great many glowing animals do not make light at all. They house bacteria that do — and the bobtail squid recruits its bacteria from seawater within hours of hatching, filtering one species out of thousands.

• Counterillumination

  The strategy only works in a narrow band of the ocean — deep enough that a silhouette is what gives you away, shallow enough that there is still light above to match. Below that, there is nothing to match.

• Bioluminescence

  The work that isolated a jellyfish’s light protein also noted a second protein that glowed green. That one — GFP — became the standard way of making things visible inside living cells, which nobody was trying to invent.