Another common trait of deep-sea anglerfishes is that they use bioluminescence on their esca to attract prey in the darkness of the deep oceans they inhabit.

[1] Ceratioidei was first proposed as a grouping in 1912 by the English ichthyologist Charles Tate Regan as the division Ceratiformes within the suborder Lophoidea of the order Pediculati, which included the Batrachoididae.

[4] A 2024 study found that although the ceratioids likely diverged from the Chaunacidae during the Paleocene, the diversification into their multiple modern families only occurred throughout the Eocene following the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

[5] Owing to the extreme environments they inhabit, fossil remains of deep-sea anglerfishes are very rare in the geologic record.

Only a few formations worldwide preserve them, which tend to have been deposited in tectonically active regions where deep-sea sediments could be uplifted to the surface.