Black and white bars, in shoals over a single coral head they never leave.
To about 10 cm, white with three broad black bars — one through the eye, two across the body — and a white tail. The similar Dascyllus melanurus has a black tail; D. reticulatus has a single faint bar and a dark rear body. All three occur here and sometimes share a coral head.
Groups of five to fifty hold a single branching coral colony, feeding on plankton above it and dropping into the branches when threatened, and they will not leave that colony — a shoal is tied to one head for its whole life. Males clear a patch at the base for eggs and guard them aggressively, including against divers many times their size. It is among the first fish anyone photographs on a reef and among the harder ones to photograph well, because the group scatters into the coral at close range. Recorded from the shallows to about 20 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.