A small rubble dottyback whose colour ranges from brown and olive to plain yellow.
A dottyback to about 10 cm with a pointed snout, a long low dorsal fin running most of the back and a rounded tail. Colour is the difficulty rather than the character: individuals run brown, olive, grey, pink and clear yellow, and a single patch of rubble can hold two that look like different species. A small dark spot on each scale sets up faint lines along the flank in most colour forms, and there is usually a short dark streak behind the eye. The royal dottyback, which has its own entry, is smaller and divided sharply into two colours, so the two are not confused once seen together.
It holds a small territory in rubble, dead coral and the broken ground at the foot of a slope, moving between holes in fast short darts and rarely crossing open sand. Feeding is on small crustaceans and on the fry of other fishes. The habit of matching the colour of the damselfishes it lives among has been described as aggressive mimicry in published work on the species, the fish approaching prey under the cover of a resemblance to something that eats plankton.
Recorded widely through the Indo-West Pacific from about 2 to 30 m. It is common and easy to see and difficult to photograph, because it will not settle in the open and is usually against rubble that competes with it for attention.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.
