---
title: Jewel Damselfish (Stegastes lacrymatus)
scientific_name: Stegastes lacrymatus
common_name: Jewel Damselfish
taxon: Pomacentridae
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-07-27T11:13:18.342Z
updated: 2026-08-25T17:26:32.738Z
tags: Jewel Damselfish, Stegastes lacrymatus, Pomacentridae, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pomacentridae/jewel-damselfish
---

# Jewel Damselfish (*Stegastes lacrymatus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Pomacentridae (*Pomacentridae*)
- **Size:** up to 10 cm
- **Depth:** 1-40 m
- **Diet:** Herbivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Rubble and dead coral on reef flats and slopes
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- dark brown to blackish body scattered evenly with small blue spots
- golden eye and a pale, often yellowish tail
- juveniles blue-black with brilliant blue spots; spots fade toward white in old fish
- always sitting over a patch of rubble or dead coral, not over living plate coral
- up to 10 cm

A fish the length of a finger will come out of the rubble and charge a diver twenty times its size. It is not a bluff and it has nothing to do with you: you are kneeling on the crop.

Jewel damsels farm. Each adult holds a few square meters of dead coral and rubble and works the fine algal turf growing on it, grazing what it wants and driving off anything that might eat or shade the rest, from other damsels to surgeonfish to a passing hand. The result is visible once you know the shape of it: a patch of taller, denser turf ending at a sharp line where the owner's patience runs out. This goes to extremes in the family. A Red Sea relative, the dusky gregory, keeps gardens that are close to a monoculture of one red alga which barely survives outside them.

Naming it is a question of light. The body is dark brown to nearly black, evenly scattered with small blue spots, the eye is golden and the tail is pale. Young fish are the vivid version, blue-black with brilliant blue spots, which is where the name came from. In old fish the spots dim toward white and can vanish in ambient light at depth, so a dive light settles the identification.

Breeding is the standard damselfish arrangement and the male does most of the work. He scrapes a patch of rock bare, brings a female to it, then stays with the carpet of eggs she leaves stuck to the stone, fanning them with his pectoral fins and picking out the ones that die, until they hatch and the larvae go up into open water for a few weeks.

It lives from the shallows to about 40 m and it stays put, so the same fish can be found on the same square of rubble season after season. Most books still call it Plectroglyphidodon lacrymatus; the accepted name is now Stegastes lacrymatus.

## Also known as

- **English:** Jewel Damsel, whitespeckled demoiselle, whitespotted devil
- **French:** Demoiselle à points bleus
- **Japanese:** ルリホシスズメダイ
- **TAH:** 'atoti

## Scientific synonyms

- *Abudefduf florulentus* (Günther, 1862)
- *Abudefduf lacrymatus* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)
- *Glyphidodon florulentus* Günther, 1862
- *Glyphisodon lacrymatus* Quoy & Gaimard, 1825
- *Glyphisodon nivosus* Hombron & Jacquinot, 1853
- *Plectoglyphidodon lacrymatus* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)
- *Plectrogliphidodon lacrimatus* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)
- *Plectroglyphidodon lacrymatus* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)
- *Plectroglypidodon lacrymatus* (Quoy & Gaimard, 1825)

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/pomacentridae/jewel-damselfish)*
*Updated: August 25, 2026*