A regional damselfish whose brilliant orange juveniles look nothing like the dark adults.
Described in 1991 and restricted to the Indonesian archipelago and immediately adjacent waters, reaching about 13 cm. The two life stages are so unalike that they were long taken for different fish. Juveniles are a saturated orange to vermilion, marked with fine electric blue lines over the head and along the upper back; adults lose the pattern progressively and end brown to near black, retaining at most a trace of blue on the snout and a yellowish cast to the pectoral base. Congeners such as Neoglyphidodon melas and N. nigroris pass through comparably drab adult stages and are separated on the juvenile pattern and on fin counts.
A shallow-water fish of rubble margins, coral outcrops and the broken ground at the top of a slope, typically in the first 10 m and rarely below 12. Juveniles are solitary and strongly site-attached, holding to a single coral head or rubble patch, which makes them straightforward to relocate on a later dive. Adults are territorial and pugnacious in the way of the genus. Common within its range and easily passed over, but the juvenile is among the more colourful small fish on a muck site’s shallow section.
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.