When fish suddenly change color, there are little photoreceptors embedded deep within their skin keeping watch to ensure the color is just right, according to new research. For the first time, ...

When Lorian E. Schweikert, Ph.D., reeled in a hogfish on a fishing trip to the Florida Keys, she noticed something strange after setting it down on the deck of the boat. Hogfish are known for their ...

Dominant males of an Indonesian species of fish turn black during periods of heightened aggression, scientists have discovered. Their blackened markings, which quickly emerge at the start of a ...

From red to white to orange to blue, fish flesh can land almost anywhere on the color spectrum. What's behind this huge variation? A lot of things — from genetics to bile pigments. And parsing the ...

Despite the vast evolutionary gulf between humans and the three-spined stickleback fish, the two species have adopted a common genetic strategy to acquire the skin pigmentation that helps each species ...

In the dim light of dusk, the world appears gray. That's because we, like most vertebrates, have just on type of rod opsin, the light-sensitive pigment in our eyes that lets us see in low light.

While people and other vertebrates are color blind in dim light, some deep-sea fish may possess keen color vision to thrive in the near total darkness of their extreme environment thanks to a unique ...