Lucerna Parasitus, is Latin for lantern parasite, they are ectoparasites meaning they live on the surface of their host rather than inside. It spends a small part of it’s life using it’s ten legs to glide through the twilight zone searching for a Lanternfish, when it spots one they swim up to it and uses their sharp teeth to latch on.
They slowly eat the host till it dies then goes looking for another one. They keep doing this until they die they can live up to twelve years or the Lanternfish gets eaten. Now a primary predator of the Lanternfish is the Emperor penguin, now when an Emperor penguin eats a Lanternfish with the parasite on it the parasite dies, but so does the penguin. Now we don’t exactly know why this happens but scientists think that Lucerna Parasitus carries H5N1 a deadly bird flu known to kill penguins, though there is no proof of it.
Reproduction is unknown, though scientists believe that they are parthenogenesis, meaning females can lay eggs without having to be fertilized by a male.
They most likely lay thousands of eggs at a time, babies are independant at birth, and immediately begin seeking a host.