Marine life  /  Shrimps  /  Spotted cleaner shrimp
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Species entry

Spotted cleaner shrimp

Periclimenes yucatanicus

A transparent shrimp with purple-and-white banded legs and saddle markings, living in an anemone and waving its antennae to advertise cleaning.

Size
To 3 cm
Depth
3–25 m
Habitat
In anemones on reef
Active
Day and night
Range
Western Atlantic
Rarity
Cayman Islands
2 stars of 5, usually seen in a week
SP-01
spotted cleaner shrimp · full body · habitat
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About 2.5 cm. Transparent with brown-and-white saddle markings over the back, legs and claws striped red, purple and white, and two pairs of long white antennae banded with black.

Against the Pederson cleaner shrimp: saddles here, violet bands there.

It lives chiefly on the giant Caribbean anemone, also on the branching anemone and the corkscrew anemone, with up to six on one host, and has been recorded on corallimorphs and on upside-down jellyfish in the Virgin Islands.

To twenty-four metres. It sways its body and waves the antennae to solicit, and it will enter a fish’s mouth and gill chambers.

Note for anyone searching the literature: it stayed in Periclimenes when the Pederson cleaner shrimp moved to Ancylomenes.

Where to find:

LocationRarity Best monthsDepthHabitat
Cayman Islands Cayman Islands editorial estimate
2 stars of 5, usually seen in a week
Year-round
3–25 m
In anemones on reef
Florida United States editorial estimate
3 stars of 5, a good week should turn one up
Year-round
3–25 m
In anemones on reef
Bahamas Bahamas editorial estimate
3 stars of 5, a good week should turn one up
Year-round
3–25 m
In anemones on reef

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.

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