Pale shrimpgoby covered in orange spots rather than bars, on clean sand near the reef.
A shrimpgoby to about 9 cm, whitish to pale grey and marked over the head, body and fins with round orange to reddish-brown spots. The spotting is the identification: most Amblyeleotris in the region are barred, and this is the one that is not. It sits on the sand with the body resting on the pelvic fins and the two dorsal fins low and rounded, without the raised sail of Amblyeleotris randalli, which also carries a dark ocellus near the top of the first dorsal. Where bars appear on A. guttata at all they are faint and broken, and the spots run over them.
Lives in a shared burrow with an alpheid snapping shrimp. The shrimp digs the tunnel and pushes the spoil out, keeping one antenna in contact with the goby; the goby holds station at the entrance and watches, and a flick of its tail sends the shrimp back underground. Neither animal does the other’s job, and the burrow collapses without the shrimp. Feeds on small crustaceans and other invertebrates taken from just above the sand.
Recorded from roughly 8 to 35 m, generally on cleaner coarse sand and rubble adjacent to reef rather than the fine black silt where Cryptocentrus species dominate. It is less nervous than the deeper Stonogobiops gobies but still drops at speed, and an approach along the sand rather than down onto it holds the fish at the entrance for longer.
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.
