---
title: Striated Wrasse (Pseudocheilinus evanidus)
scientific_name: Pseudocheilinus evanidus
common_name: Striated Wrasse
taxon: Wrasse
conservation_status: LC - Least Concern
published: 2024-10-28T14:51:49.475Z
updated: 2026-08-19T16:31:47.322Z
tags: Striated Wrasse, Pseudocheilinus evanidus, Wrasse, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/striated-wrasse
---

# Striated Wrasse (*Pseudocheilinus evanidus*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Wrasse (*Labridae*)
- **Size:** up to 9 cm
- **Depth:** 3-60 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Deep among coral branches and rubble, rarely in the open
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Protogynous hermaphrodite
- **Conservation status:** LC - Least Concern

## How to recognise it

- small red-brown fish with fine pale stripes along the body
- white bar just behind the head
- always inside coral or rubble, moving in short darts
- length up to 9 cm

A small striped red-brown fish that lives inside the reef rather than on it, moving in short darts between one hiding place and the next and almost never crossing open water.

It is the shyer cousin of the sixline wrasse, and where that one at least stays inside a single coral head, this one works rubble and the deep spaces under plate corals, which is why it is seen far less often than its abundance suggests.

Nine centimeters (3.5 in), hunting the small crustaceans and worms that live in the same crevices. It sleeps in a mucus cocoon like other wrasses, which masks its scent overnight.

Finding one is a torch-and-patience job: light into a hole, wait, and it will usually cross the beam once. Photographing it is harder than finding it.

## Also known as

- **English:** disappearing wrasse, Pin-striped wrasse, striated wrasse
- **Hebrew:** שפתנית זוטית
- **French:** Labre pygmée furtif, Labre éclipse
- **Italian:** Donzella
- **German:** Weißbart-Zwerglippfisch, Weißwangen-Lippfisch
- **Portuguese:** Bodião-de-bochecha-branca
- **Czech:** pyskoun skrytý
- **Japanese:** ヒメニセモチノウオ, Hime-nisemochino-uo, Himenisemochinouo
- **Chinese:** 姬擬唇魚, 姬擬鸚鯛, 姬龍
- **DIV:** Hikaa
- **MAH:** Bok
- **SMO:** Sugale-manifi, Sugale-tusitusi

## Range

Comoros, Indian Ocean, Kenya, Red Sea, Republic of Mauritius, Seychelles

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/fishes/bony-fishes/wrasse/striated-wrasse)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*