Yellow with dense fine blue spots; always in pairs, and tied to coral-rich reef.
To about 35 cm, bright yellow to orange-yellow over the whole body and densely covered in fine pale blue spots, with a dark band running from the nape down through the eye and often a dusky blotch behind the head. The other yellow rabbitfishes here separate cleanly. The masked rabbitfish Siganus puellus carries wavy blue lines rather than round spots and a black mask across the face. The golden rabbitfish Siganus guttatus has larger gold spots on a duller ground and a distinct yellow blotch below the rear of the dorsal fin. The goldspotted spinefoot Siganus punctatus reverses the scheme, with orange-gold spots on a bluish-brown body.
It grazes algae growing among branching and tabulate corals and is almost always in pairs, the two fish staying within a body length of each other and turning together. Pairs are thought to be long-lived. It uses coral-rich reef rather than open sediment, so it is regular on the intact slopes of Papua New Guinea and Bali and much scarcer along the silty muck coasts, where it is confined to the coral patches.
Rabbitfishes settle at night into a blotchy brown camouflage pattern and wedge themselves into the reef, and a fish found in that state on a night dive is close to unrecognisable against the daytime colours. Recorded from about 3 to 30 m.
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.
