Transparent with white saddles and red-brown spots, usually on a carpet anemone.
A shrimp to about 3 cm, transparent, with three or four opaque white bands running across the back and abdomen and a sparse scatter of red-brown to purple spots over the body and the long slender legs. The rostrum is long and finely toothed. It sits between the other two saddled species in appearance: the magnificent anemone shrimp carries the same white bands but with heavy purple outlining and banded legs, while the Tosa commensal shrimp has small white spots and no bands at all. Like both of those it was described in Periclimenes and now sits in Ancylomenes.
The usual hosts are the carpet anemones Stichodactyla haddoni and S. mertensii, which lie flat on open sand, and it is also found on Heteractis, on tube anemones and occasionally on soft corals, so a carpet anemone in the middle of a sand slope is the thing to check. Several shrimps commonly share one host, and the host is often also occupied by anemonefish and a porcelain crab. It cleans, and it feeds on mucus and particles taken from the anemone.
It walks openly over the oral disc and drops down among the tentacles when a light or a camera comes close, then works its way back to the surface within a minute or two if nothing further happens. 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.