---
title: Chevron Butterflyfish (Chaetodon trifascialis)
scientific_name: Chaetodon trifascialis
common_name: Chevron Butterflyfish
taxon: Butterflyfishes
conservation_status: NT - Near Threatened
published: 2024-10-28T01:05:38.660Z
updated: 2026-08-29T00:34:54.181Z
tags: Chevron Butterflyfish, Chaetodon trifascialis, Butterflyfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/chevron-butterflyfish
---

# Chevron Butterflyfish (*Chaetodon trifascialis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Butterflyfishes (*Chaetodontidae*)
- **Size:** up to 18 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Corallivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** table and staghorn Acropora on sheltered slopes
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Gonochoric
- **Conservation status:** NT - Near Threatened

## How to recognise it

- pale body covered in dark chevrons that point forward
- black tail with a yellow rear margin
- black band through the eye with pale edges
- juveniles black with a yellow tail base and pectoral fins
- up to 18 cm

This is the most specialized butterflyfish in the ocean, and the specialization has a name: Acropora. It feeds on the polyps and mucus of table and staghorn corals, above all the big flat tables, and it does not do well on anything else. Find a healthy table coral on a sheltered slope and you have found the only place to look for it.

It does not share. A single fish claims a colony or a cluster of them and drives off other coral-feeding butterflyfishes and its own species alike; males hold larger territories than females and pick more fights over them. On a good reef the slope is a mosaic of these claims, each one a fish and its table.

The pattern is unmistakable once you have it. The body is pale and covered in dark lines that bend forward into a stack of chevrons, the tail is black with a yellow rear margin, and a black band edged in pale runs through the eye. Juveniles look nothing like that, being largely black with a yellow tail base and yellow pectoral fins, and they hide inside coral branches.

The cost of the specialization comes due in a warm year. Tabular Acropora are among the first corals to bleach and die, and when they go this fish goes with them. After mass bleaching in the western Indian Ocean it disappeared from reef flats altogether, and declines of a fifth to a third have been reported across parts of the Indo-Pacific. The IUCN lists it as Near Threatened, which is unusual in a family where nearly everything is Least Concern.

It is a normal Red Sea fish rather than a rare one, but it is only as common as its coral, so you will see it over live Acropora between 1 and 30 m and nowhere else. Some authors take it out of Chaetodon and put it in a genus of its own, Megaprotodon; the world register still keeps it where it is.

## Also known as

- **English:** chevron butterflyfish, Acropora Butterfly, Chevroned Butterflyfish
- **Arabic:** Moscht
- **Hebrew:** פרפרון שחור-זנב
- **French:** Chaetodon à chevrons, Papillon à chevrons, Poisson-papillon à chevrons
- **Italian:** Pesce farfalla gallonato
- **German:** Sparren-Falterfisch
- **Spanish:** Pez mariposa Chevrón
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-borboleta-do-coral
- **Dutch:** Chevron koraalvlinder
- **Czech:** klipka krokvicová
- **Japanese:** ヤリカタギ, Yarikatagi
- **Chinese:** 三紋蝴蝶魚, 三纹蝴蝶鱼, 巛紋蝴蝶魚
- **Russian:** Бабочка-шеврон
- **CA:** Peix papallona coral·lí
- **DA:** Vinkel-fanefisk
- **FIJ:** daliga ragutu
- **TAH:** paraharaha
- **TH:** ปลาผีเสื้อก้างปลา

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chaetodon bifascialis* Cuvier, 1829
- *Chaetodon leachii* Cuvier, 1831
- *Chaetodon striangulus* Cuvier, 1831
- *Chaetodon strigangulus* Lay & Bennett, 1839
- *Chaetodon tearlachi* Curtiss, 1938
- *Chaetodon triangularis* Rüppell, 1829
- *Eteira taunayi* Kaup, 1860
- *Megapotodon trifascialis* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)
- *Megaprotodon strigangulus* (Cuvier, 1831)
- *Megaprotodon trifascialis* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Red Sea, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/chevron-butterflyfish)*
*Updated: August 29, 2026*