---
title: Dapple Coris (Coris variegata)
scientific_name: Coris variegata
common_name: Dapple Coris
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T15:55:37.807Z
updated: 2026-08-20T14:35:49.223Z
tags: Dapple Coris, Coris variegata, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/dapple-coris
---

# Dapple Coris (*Coris variegata*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** 20 cm
- **Depth:** 1-10 m
- **Diet:** Durophage
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef, rubble and sand
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- olive to brown body dappled with pale blotches
- females and juveniles patterned differently from males
- works shallow rubble at a steady pace
- up to 20 cm

Whether this fish exists depends on which authority you ask, and that is worth understanding rather than glossing over.

The regional guide to this sea lists it as a Red Sea endemic reaching twenty centimeters, feeding on crabs and snails on shallow rubble. The world register of marine species does not accept the name at all: it treats it as a synonym of the clown coris, a widespread Indo-Pacific fish that grows to over a meter.

Both positions are defensible and the disagreement is ordinary. A species is a hypothesis about which animals belong together, and hypotheses are revised. Specialists working a single basin see local populations closely and tend to split; specialists working a whole ocean see the range of variation across it and tend to lump. Neither is being careless.

What that means in practice is that a dappled twenty-centimeter coris on shallow Red Sea rubble is a real animal you can watch, whatever it is eventually called. It works the bottom steadily, turning over small stones for crabs and gastropods, and males, females and juveniles are all patterned differently.

## Also known as

- **English:** Dapple Coris

## Scientific synonyms

- *Coris variegatus* (Rüppell, 1835)
- *Halichoeres variegatus* Rüppell, 1835

---

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