A striped clingfish that lives among the arms of a feather star and matches its colours.
A clingfish to about 4 cm, flattened underneath with the pelvic fins formed into a broad sucking disc on the belly, and marked with one or two dark stripes running the length of the body over a ground colour that follows the host: yellow or cream on a pale feather star, red on a red one, near black on a dark one. The head is broad and blunt, the body tapers hard to the tail, and the whole animal sits flat along an arm rather than hanging free among it.
It lives on feather stars, which have their own entry as habitat, moving between the arms and the cirri and clamping to an arm with the disc when the host is disturbed. Feeding is partly on material the crinoid has already trapped and partly on the host’s own tissue and tube feet. The response to a light is to work around to the side of the crinoid away from the observer, so a host is searched from one side and then photographed from the other.
Two species are commonly figured from this region and they are separated on the number and arrangement of the stripes, which varies within a species, so records here are kept at the genus. Recorded from about 5 to 30 m wherever feather stars are common, and a crinoid on rubble is worth going through for the whole set of associates rather than for this fish alone.
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.