Author: Isabelle Ng, PhD candidate, College of Science and Engineering, James Cook University

Swim along the edge of a coral reef and you’ll often see schools of sleek, torpedo-shaped fishes gliding through the currents, feeding on tiny plankton from the water column. For decades, scientists assumed these plankton-feeding fishes – or planktivores – shared specialised traits: forked tails and streamlined body forms for speed, large eyes for spotting small prey, and small extendable jaws for suction-feeding. But our new study, published in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries, shows there is more nuance to this story. We found plankton-feeding fishes don’t follow a single uniform design. To our surprise, they display the widest…