A transparent goby that lives on the stems of soft corals and takes their colour.
A commensal goby to about 3 cm, almost entirely transparent, with a pink to red stripe running along the midline of the body and a matching wash over the top of the head. The gut and the spine show through the flank. Against the trunk of a Dendronephthya the animal is close to invisible until it moves, and most sightings begin with a small shadow shifting on a stem rather than with the fish itself.
It sits on the thicker branches and the main stem rather than out among the polyps, usually low down where the colony is broadest, and moves around to the far side of the stem when approached. Several may occupy one large colony. Food is small planktonic animals taken from the water immediately around the host, and there is no evidence that the coral is either harmed or fed by the arrangement.
The genus is large and the species look alike; the combination of a soft coral host and the red midline stripe covers most records, while animals on sponges, sea squirts and hard corals belong to other members of the genus. Recorded from about 5 to 30 m across the Indo-Pacific. A photograph that shows the host colony is worth more than one that shows only the fish.
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.
