Bumblebee shrimp

Two to two and a half centimetres, and stout — deep-bodied and almost beetle-like for a shrimp, which is the quickest way to place the genus. Cream to yellow with broad chocolate-brown to black bands across the body, bluish tints and banded legs. Separating it from its congeners needs the rostral teeth and the enlarged third mouthpart rather than the colour, and they are in other oceans in any case. Note the family: WoRMS places it in the Palaemonidae, where older literature and most dive guides use Gnathophyllidae — a live disagreement rather than an error.

Free-living rather than symbiotic, but closely tied to echinoderms: it is found near urchins, sea stars and brittle stars and is reported to feed on their tube feet. That diet is the standard account everywhere and appears not to have been tested for this species, so read it as likely rather than demonstrated. Cryptic and mostly nocturnal, in rubble, under ledges and among urchin spines, and often in pairs. It moves slowly and does not flee far, which makes it an unusually cooperative subject. Recorded from the shallows to about 30 m. Its distribution is odd enough to mention: it is listed from the Caribbean, Brazil, west Africa and the Atlantic islands as well as right across the Indo-Pacific, which for a two-centimetre cryptic shrimp probably means more than one species is involved.