A small purple and yellow anthias hanging in clouds off Maldivian drop-offs, feeding into the current.
To about 12 cm. Violet with a broad yellow area over the back running into a yellow dorsal and tail, which is visible at range in a school and is the whole identification. Males add an orange band through the eye, yellow spots on the side, a fleshy bump on the snout, drawn-out tail lobes and filaments on the pelvic fins. Females are pinkish below and lack the bump and the filaments.
The threadfin anthias is also violet and yellow, also Maldivian and also schools on drop-offs. No clean single separator was found in the sources, so this entry does not offer one. What is sourced: the male’s snout bump and fin filaments, and that the threadfin anthias commonly shoals mixed in with sea goldies, which this fish is not recorded doing.
Four to forty metres, usually ten to thirty-five, on outer reef slopes and along the upper part of drop-offs, feeding on zooplankton well up in the water column. The school does not hold for a close approach; it shifts down and in toward the reef.
The name is unsettled. Mirolabrichthys evansi is the accepted combination after the 2022 revision, but Pseudanthias evansi still dominates field guides and the aquarium trade, and the family is now given as Anthiadidae rather than Serranidae.
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.
