Whitish shrimpgoby with five plain brown bars and an unmarked head.
A pale shrimpgoby to about 9 cm, whitish to cream with five brown or tan bars crossing the body, the first over the nape and the last on the tail base. The useful mark is what is absent: the head and cheek are plain, without the scattering of dark spots that Amblyeleotris periophthalma carries on the snout and behind the eye, and without the fine spotting between the bars that several similar species show. The bars themselves are narrower than the pale gaps between them. This is a genuinely awkward group, and a photograph of the head taken square-on is worth more than a general shot of the fish.
Shares a burrow with an alpheid snapping shrimp, the shrimp excavating and maintaining the tunnel while the goby sits at the mouth as lookout. The shrimp keeps an antenna resting on the goby’s body and reads its movements; when the goby retreats, the shrimp follows within a moment. Feeds on small benthic crustaceans.
Recorded from about 5 to 30 m on sand and rubble close to reef, often at the base of a slope or in a sand channel. It is one of the commoner barred shrimpgobies across the region but is regularly logged only as a generic Amblyeleotris, so local records understate it.
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.
