An international team of researchers has identified a way to predict which reef fish can live across a greater range of depths, from shallow depths to the mesophotic or ‘twilight zone’, increasing their chances of surviving natural disasters such as cyclones and coral bleaching.

The Indo-Pacific sergeant fish hides in the reefs of warm coastal waters from Japan to New Zealand to the Persian Gulf. The small tropical fish spends most of its life eating plankton and rarely ventures far from shore. Yet, one day in 1991, an Indo-Pacific sergeant showed up in Hawaii—far, far from home.