---
title: Lozenge Filefish (Stephanolepis diaspros)
scientific_name: Stephanolepis diaspros
common_name: Lozenge Filefish
taxon: Filefishes
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-01-02T10:58:13.513Z
updated: 2026-08-17T10:40:25.160Z
tags: Lozenge Filefish, Stephanolepis diaspros, Filefishes, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/filefishes/lozenge-filefish
---

# Lozenge Filefish (*Stephanolepis diaspros*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Filefishes (*Monacanthidae*)
- **Size:** 25 cm
- **Depth:** 20-50 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Rocky ground with weed, sand and seagrass
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- brown body under a lighter net-like pattern
- concave snout profile and a tall first dorsal spine
- skin rough as sandpaper
- juveniles sheltering under drifting jellyfish
- up to 25 cm

This fish left. In 1869 the Suez Canal opened a connection between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean for the first time in geological history, and the traffic through it has run almost entirely one way, northward, because the species on this side handle a warm, salty, nutrient-poor sea better than the Mediterranean's own fauna handles competing with them. Several hundred species have made the crossing. They are called Lessepsian migrants, after Ferdinand de Lesseps, who built the canal.

This filefish was among the first anyone noticed. It was recorded in the eastern Mediterranean in the 1920s and is now an ordinary part of the fish community there, from Israel to Turkey.

At home it is unremarkable: a small brown filefish over weedy rock, sand and seagrass, picking small invertebrates off the bottom, down to about fifty meters. The skin is rough as sandpaper, which is what the family is named for.

The young have a habit worth knowing. They shelter under drifting jellyfish, riding along beneath the bell where very little will follow them.

## Also known as

- **English:** Reticulated Leatherjacket
- **Arabic:** سمك السترة الجلدية الشبكي
- **Hebrew:** זיפיון מחוספס
- **French:** Bourse Garnale, Bourse réticulée
- **Italian:** Monacanto reticolato
- **German:** Feilenfisch
- **Spanish:** Ballesta reticulada, Lija Garnal
- **Greek:** Μονόχειρος
- **Turkish:** Dikenli Çütre, dikenli cutre
- **Portuguese:** Peixe-porco-reticulado
- **Dutch:** Ruitvormige Vijlvis
- **Czech:** pilníkotrn síťkovaný
- **Russian:** Сетчатый стефанолепис
- **CA:** Peix llima reticulat
- **FI:** ornamenttiviilakala

## Scientific synonyms

- *Stephanolepis ocheticus* Fraser-Brunner, 1940
- *Stephanolepis weberi* Fowler & Steinitz, 1956

## Range

Federal Republic of Somalia, Greece, Mediterranean Sea - Eastern Basin, North Atlantic Ocean

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/filefishes/lozenge-filefish)*
*Updated: August 17, 2026*