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Halichoeres maculipinna

Clown Wrasse
Collection Details

Specimens

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Taxonomic Hierarchy

Actinopterygii (Ray-finned Fishes) Perciformes (Perciformes, Also Called the Acanthopteri) Labridae (Wrasses) Halichoeres Halichoeres maculipinna (Clown Wrasse)

Description

This species account was compiled from Composite (multiple sources) (Carpenter, K.E. (ed.) 2002. The living marine resources of the Western Central Atlantic. FAO Species Identification Guide for Fishery Purposes. FAO, Rome.) and processed using AI-assisted text extraction. It may contain errors in spelling, punctuation, or formatting. When citing, please reference the original source rather than this page. Learn more about our species accounts.

Synonymy

None / Halichoeres bivittatus (Bloch, 1791).

Characters

Body slender, depth 3.3 to 4.6 in st andard length. Head rounded and scaleless; snout blunt; 1 pair of enlarged canine teeth at front of upper jaw and a sm all canine posteriorly near corner of mouth; 1 pair of enlarged canine teeth anteriorly in lower jaw, anterior canine teeth outcurved, particularly the upper canines. Gill rakers on first arch 13 to 15. Dorsal fin continuous, with 9 spines and 11 soft rays; anal fin with 3 spines and 11 soft rays; caudal fin rounded; pectoral-fin rays 14. Lateral line continuous with an abrupt downward bend beneath soft portion of dorsal fin, and 27 pored scales. Colour: body colour variable, with markings in green, blue, violet, rose, orange, and yellow; sm all fish with a broad dark stripe on upper side of body, white below; 3 transverse red lines across top of head and 2 U-shaped lines on snout; large adult males with a dark spot on interspinous membrane of dorsal-fin rays 4 to 7 and a prominent black spot on midside.
Body shape: fusiform / normal. Wide black stripe through eye to base of tail, bordered above by prominent gold line. Large black spot on mid-side. Large black spot on mid-side above origin of anal fin (Ref. 26938). Three transverse red bands on top of head; large adult males become primarily rose and green, lose the dark lateral stripe, gain a prominent black spot on mid-side, and have a larger black spot in the spinous portion of the dorsal fin (Ref. 13442).

Distribution

North Carolina, Florida, Bermuda, Florida Keys, and south to Brazil.

Habitat Associations

Sh allow coral reefs and rocky reefs, down to a depth of about 25 m. Feeds on sm all invertebrates and fishes.

Biology

Maximum length to about 12 cm.
Abundant on reef tops and in shallow rocky areas. Found to depths of at least 25 m (Ref. 26938). Also found in Sargassum beds (Ref. 9626). Solitary and wary and can be difficult to approach (Ref. 26938). The tricolored pattern of the initial phase is similar to that of the juveniles of the yellowmouth grouper, Mycteroperca interstitialis, an aggressive mimic (Ref. 43465). A protogynous hermaphrodite (Ref. 55367). Generally of no interest to fisheries because of its small average size (Ref. 5217).
Reproductive mode: protogyny; fertilization: external. Diandric. Forms leks during breeding (Ref. 55367). Length at sex change = 10.9 cm TL (Ref. 55367).
IUCN Red List Status: Least Concern (LC), assessed 2008-11-06. Resilience: High (Preliminary K or Fecundity.).

Commercial or Environmental Importance

This species is not marketed for food, and is r arely seen in the aquarium trade.

References

Randall, J.E. (1967) Food habits of reef fishes of the West Indies. Stud. Trop. Oceanogr. Miami 5:665-847.
Robins, C.R. and G.C. Ray (1986) A field guide to Atlantic coast fishes of North America. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, U.S.A. 354 p.
Lieske, E. and R. Myers (1994) Collins Pocket Guide. Coral reef fishes. Indo-Pacific & Caribbean including the Red Sea. Haper Collins Publishers, 400 p.
Randall, J.E. (1996) Caribbean reef fishes. Third Edition - revised and enlarged. T.F.H. Publications, Inc. Ltd., Hong Kong. 3nd ed. 368 p.
García-Cagide, A., R. Claro and B.V. Koshelev (1994) Reproducción. p. 187-262. In R. Claro (ed.) Ecología de los peces marinos de Cuba. Inst. Oceanol. Acad. Cienc. Cuba. and Cen. Invest. Quintana Roo (CIQRO) México.
Smith, C.L. (1997) National Audubon Society field guide to tropical marine fishes of the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, the Bahamas, and Bermuda. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. 720 p.

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