---
title: Indian Ocean Humbug (Dascyllus abudafur)
scientific_name: Dascyllus abudafur
common_name: Indian Ocean Humbug
taxon: Pomacentridae
published: 2024-07-27T11:32:15.866Z
updated: 2026-08-15T14:13:08.877Z
tags: Indian Ocean Humbug, Dascyllus abudafur, Pomacentridae, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pomacentridae/indian-ocean-humbug
---

# Indian Ocean Humbug (*Dascyllus abudafur*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Pomacentridae (*Pomacentridae*)
- **Size:** up to 9 cm
- **Depth:** 0-20 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Branching coral heads in shallow lagoons
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Protogynous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- white with two broad black bars, essentially identical to the Humbug Dascyllus
- separated by range and by genetics rather than by appearance
- over branching coral in shallow water
- length up to 9 cm

The same black and white fish over the same coral heads, and for most of a century the same species. This is the Red Sea and western Indian Ocean population of the humbug damselfish, separated out as its own species when genetic work showed the Indian Ocean and Pacific forms had been apart long enough to count.

That is worth a card because it is not an exception. A great many of the fish on this reef were treated as Indo-Pacific species with enormous ranges, and as the genetics get done, one after another turns out to be a local species that merely looks like the Pacific one. The Red Sea has been repeatedly isolated from the Indian Ocean, and its fauna diverged during those closures.

For a diver nothing changes: it is a humbug over a coral head, it lives in a size-ordered group, and it drops into the branches when a shadow passes.

For a catalogue it changes everything, because the name on the card is the difference between a widespread fish and a regional one - and the second kind is what makes this fauna worth documenting separately.

## Also known as

- **English:** Indian Ocean Humbug, Indian Humbug
- **French:** Demoiselle à trois bandes
- **Italian:** Damigella fasciata occidentale, Damigella juventina occidentale
- **German:** Indik-Dreibinden-Preußenfisch
- **Spanish:** Damisela de tres bandas Índica
- **Portuguese:** Donzela-de-cauda-branca-indiana
- **CA:** Dascyllus ratllat indi

## Scientific synonyms

- *Chaaetodon abudafur* Forsskål, 1775
- *Chaetodon abudafur* Forsskål, 1775

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pomacentridae/indian-ocean-humbug)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*