---
title: Yellowthroat Blenny (Alloblennius jugularis)
scientific_name: Alloblennius jugularis
common_name: Yellowthroat Blenny
taxon: Combtooth blenny
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-11-17T21:37:23.948Z
updated: 2026-08-20T16:17:04.200Z
tags: Yellowthroat Blenny, Alloblennius jugularis, Combtooth blenny, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/yellowthroat-blenny
---

# Yellowthroat Blenny (*Alloblennius jugularis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Combtooth blenny (*Blenniidae*)
- **Size:** 5 cm
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Rock and dead coral in shallow water, in small holes
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small pale blenny with a yellow throat
- dark bars or blotches along the flank
- head projecting from a hole barely wider than itself
- up to 5 cm

What limits a small blenny is not food. It is holes.

Algae and detritus are everywhere on a shallow reef, and a five-centimeter grazer will never run out. What it can run out of is a hole of the right size: wide enough to enter, narrow enough that nothing bigger can follow, deep enough to reverse into, and positioned somewhere with something to eat within a few body lengths. That combination is scarce, and on a well-populated reef flat essentially every suitable hole is occupied.

So blennies fight over property, and the fights are about real estate rather than territory in the usual sense. An empty worm tube, a hollow in dead coral, a barnacle shell that has lost its owner: all of it is taken within hours. Where researchers have added artificial holes to a reef, the local population of small blennies goes up, which is about as direct a demonstration as ecology gets.

This one is a shallow-water species of rock and dead coral, pale with a yellow throat, watching the world from a hole it does not intend to leave.

## Also known as

- **English:** Jugular Blenny

## Scientific synonyms

- *Blennius jugularis* Klunzinger, 1871
- *Glyptoparus jugularis* (Klunzinger, 1871)

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/combtooth-blenny/yellowthroat-blenny)*
*Updated: August 20, 2026*