wrasse tagged posts

A rainbow-coloured fish that lives on “twilight zone” reefs off the Maldives has finally been recognised as a new species, more than two decades after its discovery. The rose-veiled fairy wrasse (Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa) was formally described last week in the journal ZooKeys, after years of research. The wrasse, which can grow up to 7 centimetres long, lives on reefs found 50 to 150 metres beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.

It was first collected in the 1990s but was initially thought to be an adult version of Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis, a fish from the Chagos Archipelago island chain, 1,000 kilometres further south.

As part of an initiative called Hope for Reefs, scientists from the California Academy of Sciences, University of Sydney, Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMR...

Some fish may be a little smarter than you think. In a study conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and Osaka City University, researchers have discovered that fish may, in fact, possess far higher cognitive abilities than previously thought. The fish in the study seemed to demonstrate some form of self-awareness.

The fish the, Labroides dimidiatus, was the star of the experiment. For the uninitiated  Labroides dimidiatus or the Bluestreak cleaner wrasse, is a fish commonly seen in coral reefs from Eastern Africa and the Red Sea to French Polynesia.S

As implied in the name, the Bluestreak cleaner wrasse is known for its cleaning ability. The fish has mutualistic relationships with a lot of the other much larger fish found in corals...