---
title: Elegant Anemone Shrimp (Cuapetes elegans)
scientific_name: Cuapetes elegans
common_name: Elegant Anemone Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-28T11:45:06.688Z
updated: 2026-08-19T12:32:14.151Z
tags: Elegant Anemone Shrimp, Cuapetes elegans, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/elegant-anemone-shrimp
---

# Elegant Anemone Shrimp (*Cuapetes elegans*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** 2 - 3 cm
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** On anemones, corals and sea cucumbers
- **Reproduction:** Brooder

## How to recognise it

- glassy transparent body with fine white lines and dots
- long slender claws held forward
- on the column or underside of a host rather than on the tentacles
- up to 3 cm

Half a dozen shrimp species can live on the same anemone without meeting, because they are not using the same anemone.

One works the tentacle crown. One stays on the column, below the tentacles, where the stinging cells are sparser. One lives underneath, on the foot and the rock immediately around it. One is out only at night, when the daytime residents have settled. Add the crabs and the fish, and a single large anemone supports a stack of tenants that overlap physically and barely overlap ecologically.

This is the same partitioning that lets a hundred species of small fish share a coral head, and it is the reason a host animal on a reef is better thought of as an address than as an individual.

This one is a glassy, near-invisible shrimp with fine white lines, catholic about its host - anemones, corals, sea cucumbers - and mostly active at night, which is a partition of its own. Photographers find it by the white markings, because the animal itself does not register.

## Also known as

- **Japanese:** シオダマリカクレエビ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Anchistia elegans* Paulson, 1875
- *Kemponia elegans* (Paulson, 1875)
- *Periclimenes (Falciger) dubius* Borradaile, 1915
- *Periclimenes elegans* (Paulson, 1875)

## Range

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arafura Sea, Arnhem Coast to Gulf of Carpenteria, Banda Sea, Bismarck Sea, Bonaparte Coast, Central and Southern Great Barrier Reef, East China Sea, Exmouth to Broome, Fiji Islands, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Thailand, Gulf of Tonkin, Halmahera, Hawaii, Lesser Sunda, Malacca Strait, Maldives, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Northern and Central Red Sea, Palawan/North Borneo, Rapa-Pitcairn, Seychelles, Society Islands, South China Sea Oceanic Islands, South India and Sri Lanka, South Kuroshio, Southern China, Southern Red Sea, Sulawesi Sea/Makassar Strait, Tuamotus, West Caroline Islands, Western and Northern Madagascar

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/elegant-anemone-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 19, 2026*