---
title: Crown Butterflyfish (Chaetodon paucifasciatus)
scientific_name: Chaetodon paucifasciatus
common_name: Crown Butterflyfish
taxon: Butterflyfishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2023-12-22T22:15:09.082Z
updated: 2026-08-15T23:05:15.658Z
tags: Crown Butterflyfish, Chaetodon paucifasciatus, Butterflyfishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/crown-butterflyfish
---

# Crown Butterflyfish (*Chaetodon paucifasciatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Butterflyfishes (*Chaetodontidae*)
- **Size:** 14 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Coral-rich reef flats and slopes, usually in pairs
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- white body crossed by fine black chevrons
- orange-red wash over the rear body and the back of the dorsal and anal fins
- black cap on the nape edged in white, and a black bar through the eye
- red bar across the tail fin
- up to 14 cm

The butterflyfish you meet most often here, and one you cannot meet anywhere else. Apart from the Gulf of Aden, this species lives in the Red Sea and nowhere else on earth.

What keeps it common is that it is not a specialist. Many butterflyfish eat coral polyps and almost nothing else, and after a bleaching event those species disappear from a reef along with the coral. This one takes polyps, but also algae, polychaete worms and small crustaceans, and reef surveys through repeated bleaching have watched the generalists hold their numbers while the coral-only feeders crash.

They move in pairs, and the pairs are long term. Two fish work the same stretch of reef side by side for years, and a fish that loses its partner gets pushed around by the neighbors until it finds another.

The black cap over the head with its white edge is the quickest mark, and the orange-red wash across the back half of the body separates it from every other butterflyfish in this sea.

## Also known as

- **English:** crown butterflyfish, Red Sea Chevron Butterflyfish, Eritrean butterflyfish
- **Arabic:** Moscht
- **Hebrew:** פרפרון האודם
- **French:** Poisson-papillon orange
- **Italian:** Pesce farfalla eritreo
- **German:** Rotfleck-Falterfisch
- **Spanish:** Pez Mariposa Real
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-borboleta-da-Eritreia
- **Dutch:** Kroonkoraalvlinder
- **Czech:** klipka rudoskvrnná
- **Russian:** Красноспинная рыба-бабочка
- **CA:** Peix papallona reina
- **DA:** Eritrea-fanefisk

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chaetodon chrysurus paucifasciatus* Ahl, 1923
- *Exornator rhombochaetodon paucifasciatus* (Ahl, 1923)

## Range

Djibouti, Eritrea, Federal Republic of Somalia, Red Sea

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/butterflyfishes/crown-butterflyfish)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*