A U.S.-led international research team studying sound production in deep-sea fish has found cusk-eels use several sets of muscles to produce sound.

Virginia Commonwealth University biologists Professor Michael Fine, Kim Nguyen and Hsung Lin, along with Eric Parmentier at the University of Liege in Belgium studied the sonic muscles of the fawn cusk-eel Lepophidium profundorum, a species found in the Atlantic Ocean.

Little is known about acoustic communication in the deep sea because of the difficulties of observing fish in this habitat, said Fine. Based on anatomy, ophidiid fishes, or cusk-eels, are likely one of the chief sound producers. They have unusual sonic muscles that occur in antagonistic pairs and are typically larger in males."

The research and its findings appear in the Royal Society's journal Biology Letters. (c) UPI