The species generally does not exceed 25 cm in length and is found exclusively in marine environments, along various parts of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans on continental shelves.

[3] Neoscopelus macrolepidotus was originally discovered at Madeira, an autonomous region of Portugal, by English naturalist James Yate Johnson in 1863.

For instance, Neoscopelus macrolepidetus and other closely related lanternfishes are evolutionarily fit to have greater visual capabilities in the mesopelagic due to the presence of larger eyes.

Since the species Neoscopelus macrolepidotus has rows of small teeth, the feeding capabilities can be expanded to other types of micronekton, such as smaller fishes or crustaceans.

Based on Kuwabara's experiments, there were larger photophores and more of them in the tongues of N. microchir, which allowed for another distinguishing factor from the otherwise extremely similar species.

This is a form of camouflage that fish use to match the intensity of light in the mesopelagic zone in order to hide their silhouettes from larger predators below.

The use of the photophores found in their tongues is unknown, but could be a possible aid in feeding and species recognition in the dim mesopelagic and the dark bathypelagic.