This fish was described in 2012, from the 🌊 Red Sea, and its genus contains two species in total.
That is worth sitting with. This is one of the most heavily dived coastlines on earth: thousands of people are in the water here every day, most of them with cameras, and the fauna has been worked over by naturalists since Ruppell in the 1820s. And a blenny living at one to fifteen meters, in reach of any snorkeler, went unnamed until this decade.
It happens because of what people look at. A four-centimeter dark fish that spends its time reversed into a hole with only its head showing is not what anyone points a camera at, and the ones that were photographed were filed as something else. The species that get described late are almost never rare or deep. They are small, brown, and boring, and there are certainly more of them here.
What is known about this one is thin: a slender fangblenny with the pair of long lower canines the group is named for, on shallow reef, in holes. Almost everything else about how it lives is still open.
The genus. Adelotremus Smith-Vaniz & Rose 2012 - adelos (concealed) + trema (hole). ETYFish
The species. Adelotremus leptus Smith-Vaniz & Rose 2012 - thin or slender. ETYFish
- very slender dark blenny with a pale stripe along the flank
- pair of long canines in the lower jaw
- backs into a hole and watches from the entrance
- under 4 cm
Why it's threatened
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
