---
title: Flattened Coral Shrimp (Harpiliopsis depressa)
scientific_name: Harpiliopsis depressa
common_name: Flattened Coral Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-03T14:23:23.802Z
updated: 2026-08-15T09:42:36.316Z
tags: Flattened Coral Shrimp, Harpiliopsis depressa, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/flattened-coral-shrimp
---

# Flattened Coral Shrimp (*Harpiliopsis depressa*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 3 cm
- **Depth:** 1-30 m
- **Diet:** Omnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Deep among the branches of Pocillopora and Stylophora heads
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- body flattened top to bottom, unusually so for a shrimp
- transparent with brown or reddish stripes along the back
- always inside a branching coral, never in the open
- length up to 3 cm

A shrimp flattened from above rather than from the sides, which is unusual, and the shape is the whole explanation: it lives pressed into the gaps between coral branches, where a normally built shrimp would not fit.

Branching coral heads are small cities. The same colony holds guard crabs that fight off crown-of-thorns starfish, coral gobies, a scorpionfish or two, and several species of shrimp including this one - all of them living on the coral's mucus, on trapped particles, and on each other's leftovers, and all of them dependent on the colony staying alive.

That is the fragile part. When branching corals bleach and die, this whole community goes with them, and the loss is invisible from outside: the skeleton is still standing.

Three centimeters (1.2 in), transparent with stripes. Torch into the middle of a Pocillopora head and something will move.

## Also known as

- **English:** flattened shrimp
- **Japanese:** タテジマモシオエビ

## Scientific synonyms

- *Anchistia gracilis* Dana, 1852
- *Anchistia notata* Heller, 1865
- *Harpilius depressus* Stimpson, 1860
- *Pelias notatus* Heller, 1862
- *Periclimenes pusillus* Rathbun, 1906

## Range

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Banda Sea, Bismarck Sea, Central and Southern Great Barrier Reef, Chagos, Clipperton, Cocos Islands, Coral Sea, Cortezian, Delagoa, East African Coral Coast, Eastern Galapagos Islands, Eastern Philippines, Fiji Islands, Gilbert/Ellis Islands, Gulf of Aden, Hawaii, Line Islands, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, Maldives, Mariana Islands, Marquesas, Marshall Islands, Mascarene Islands, Mexican Tropical Pacific, New Caledonia, Nicoya, Northern and Central Red Sea, Palawan/North Borneo, Panama Bight, Revillagigedos, Samoa Islands, Seychelles, Society Islands, South China Sea Oceanic Islands, South India and Sri Lanka, South Kuroshio, Southern China, Southern Red Sea, Southern Vietnam, Torres Strait Northern Great Barrier Reef, Tuamotus, Western Galapagos Islands, Western and Northern Madagascar

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/flattened-coral-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 15, 2026*