Every group is a queue: one breeding female, one breeding male, and juveniles waiting.
Orange with three white bars — one behind the head, one across the middle of the body with a forward-pointing wedge, one on the tail — each edged in black, and reaching about 11 cm. The near-identical Amphiprion percula has heavier black edging and does not occur in Sulawesi, so an ocellaris-patterned fish in Lembeh is this species; the two are reliably separated on dorsal spine count rather than on colour. Hosts are the anemones Heteractis magnifica, Stichodactyla gigantea and S. mertensii.
A group holds a strict size-based hierarchy: the largest fish is the breeding female, the second largest the breeding male, and the remainder are non-breeding juveniles that are suppressed from growing. All fish begin as males and the species is a protandrous hermaphrodite, so when the female is lost the breeding male changes sex and the next juvenile in line moves up. Recorded from the shallows to about 15 m wherever a host anemone occurs, including isolated anemones out on open sand. Fish defending eggs will make short runs at a diver’s mask; this is display, and holding position ends it faster than backing away.
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.
