When Alex Maile, a biologist, perused the jars of anglerfish pickled in alcohol at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, he found himself hooked by their lures.
“I got to see all these beautiful anglerfishes for the first time in my life, and the first thing that blew me away was, why is there so much variability in the lures?” said Mr. Maile, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas.