Matches its feather star host stripe for stripe, whatever colour that host happens to be.
A slender commensal shrimp to about 2 cm whose colour follows its host: black with white or yellow stripes on a black feather star, red and white on a red one, the stripes running lengthwise along the body and continuing onto the legs and claws so that the animal breaks up against the arms it sits among. The claws are small and the rostrum short. It was long placed in Periclimenes and appears in older references and many photograph captions as Periclimenes amboinensis; the crinoid-associated species were moved to Laomenes, and both names refer to the same animal. On the same host, the crinoid squat lobster Allogalathea elegans shares the colour scheme but is a hard-bodied, flattened animal with short broad claws, and the crinoid clingfishes (Discotrema) are fish with a sucker disc on the belly.
Lives among the arms and cirri of feather stars on rubble and on the upper part of a slope, feeding on mucus and on particles the host has already trapped. Its response to attention is to work round the host to the side away from the observer, and if the crinoid is knocked it lets go and drops. Recorded from about 5 to 30 m. Feather stars close their arms and walk off the perch when handled, so the shrimp is usually taken from whatever angle the host is already presenting rather than by turning the animal, and a crinoid that has been disturbed will often not produce the shrimp again for some minutes.
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.