---
title: Red Sea Vermiculate Wrasse (Macropharyngodon marisrubri)
scientific_name: Macropharyngodon marisrubri
common_name: Red Sea Vermiculate Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T19:07:07.461Z
updated: 2026-08-20T14:05:32.875Z
tags: Red Sea Vermiculate Wrasse, Macropharyngodon marisrubri, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/red-sea-vermiculate-wrasse
---

# Red Sea Vermiculate Wrasse (*Macropharyngodon marisrubri*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** 13 cm
- **Depth:** 4-16 m
- **Diet:** Planktivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Rubble and mixed bottom on shallow reef
- **Reproduction:** Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Endemic:** Endemic to the Red Sea
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- dense pale vermiculations over a dark body, like fingerprint whorls
- females plainer, males with stronger blue-green markings
- in small groups above rubble
- up to 13 cm

Its name is this sea. Marisrubri is the genitive of mare rubrum, the Red Sea, and a species carrying it is being declared as belonging here and nowhere else - which is what this one does. Randall described it in 1978 and it has never been found outside these waters.

Very few animals get named that way. Most Red Sea endemics carry the name of the person who collected them, or a Latin word for a color or a body part, and the sea itself appears in only a handful of scientific names. When it does, it is usually because the describer wanted to make the point that a fish which had been lumped in with a widespread Indo-Pacific species was in fact something separate that this basin had produced on its own.

That is the story of a good part of the fauna here. Isolation, repeatedly, over the ice ages, in a basin that nearly sealed itself off.

The fish is small, covered in fine pale vermiculations like fingerprint whorls over a dark ground, and works rubble in small groups picking zooplankton out of the water.

## Also known as

- **English:** Red Sea Vermiculate Wrasse
- **Hebrew:** נוניב הקווים
- **Portuguese:** Bodião-leopardo-do-Mar-Vermelho

## Scientific synonyms

- *Macropharyngodon bipartitus marisrubri* Randall, 1978

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