---
title: Striped Bumblebee Shrimp (Gnathophyllum americanum)
scientific_name: Gnathophyllum americanum
common_name: Striped Bumblebee Shrimp
taxon: Shrimps
published: 2024-11-28T12:21:29.496Z
updated: 2026-08-12T08:12:12.188Z
tags: Striped Bumblebee Shrimp, Gnathophyllum americanum, Shrimps, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/striped-bumblebee-shrimp
---

# Striped Bumblebee Shrimp (*Gnathophyllum americanum*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Shrimps (*Caridea*)
- **Size:** up to 2.5 cm
- **Depth:** 1-50 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Nocturnal
- **Rarity:** Rare
- **Habitat:** Rubble and reef, on and around sea stars and urchins
- **Reproduction:** Egg layer, Gonochoric

## How to recognise it

- tiny shrimp banded black and cream like a bumblebee, with blue and yellow legs
- stout body with a short rostrum, unlike the slender cleaner shrimps
- almost always on or beside an echinoderm
- length up to 2.5 cm

A stout little shrimp barely 2.5 cm (1 in), banded in black and cream with blue and yellow legs - a paint job that reads as a bumblebee at any distance and is easy to spot once you know it exists. Finding one is not a matter of searching the reef but of searching an animal.

It lives with echinoderms. Sea stars, brittle stars and urchins are its habitat, and it grazes on them: the tube feet and the soft tissue between the spines are the food, taken in small bites that the host survives. That makes it a parasite in the strict sense rather than a partner, though the damage is slight enough that the relationship is usually filed under commensalism.

The host is also the shelter. An animal covered in spines or armed tube feet is a bad place for a fish to hunt, and the shrimp stays inside that protection, moving to the underside when a light lands on it.

It is nocturnal, cryptic and small, which is why a species reported from warm seas worldwide is seen so rarely. Look under the arms of a sea star on a night dive.

## Also known as

- **English:** bumblebee shrimp, zebra shrimp
- **French:** Crevette-bourdon
- **Italian:** Gamberetto calabrone striato, Gamberetto ape
- **German:** Hummelgarnele
- **Spanish:** Camarón cebra
- **Portuguese:** Camarão-abelha
- **Japanese:** ヨコシマエビ
- **Chinese:** 美洲寬顎蝦, 美洲葉顎蝦

## Scientific synonyms

- *Gnathophyllum fasciolatum* Stimpson, 1860
- *Gnathophyllum minuscularium* Armstrong, 1940
- *Gnathophyllum pallidum* Ortmann, 1890
- *Gnathophyllum tridens* Nobili, 1906
- *Gnathophyllum zebra* Richters, 1880

## Range

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Azores Canaries Madeira, Bismarck Sea, Cape Verde, East African Coral Coast, Easter Island, Eastern Brazil, Eastern Caribbean, Eastern Philippines, Floridian, Greater Antilles, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Guinea Islands, Lesser Sunda, Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands, Maldives, Mariana Islands, Marquesas Islands, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, Northeastern Brazil, Seychelles, South China Sea Oceanic Islands, South Kuroshio, Southern Caribbean, Southern China, Southern Gulf of Mexico, Southern Vietnam, Southwestern Caribbean, St. Helena and Ascension Islands, Trindade and Martin Vaz Islands, Western Caribbean, Western and Northern Madagascar

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/crustaceans/shrimps/striped-bumblebee-shrimp)*
*Updated: August 12, 2026*