The shrimp that shares this fish's burrow is nearly blind, so the goby has to tell it what is happening, and the two of them have a working signal system.
The shrimp keeps one antenna resting on the goby's body or tail whenever it is out of the hole. The goby's tail does the talking. A small flick means an alert and the shrimp stops what it is doing. A hard, whole-body flick means go, and the shrimp is underground immediately. The fish also signals all clear, which is what lets the shrimp resume digging rather than sitting in the burrow for the rest of the day.
The details were worked out over decades of patient observation, much of it by Ilan Karplus in the northern 🌊 Red Sea, watching pairs through glass and interfering with them in careful ways to see what each signal was actually carrying.
The fish itself is one of the prettier shrimpgobies here, barred red-brown on white with blue speckles across the head, and it will let you approach if you settle onto the sand and stop moving.
The genus. Amblyeleotris Bleeker 1874 - amblýs (blunt). ETYFish
The species. Amblyeleotris wheeleri (Polunin & Lubbock 1977) - Honours Alwyne C. Wheeler. ETYFish
- whitish to pale yellow body with seven red-brown bars
- blue spots scattered over the head and body, red speckles near the mouth
- rounded tail fin, slightly longer than the head
- at a burrow mouth with a shrimp working behind it
- up to 10 cm
Why it's threatened
This species is a minor component of the aquarium trade, but this is not thought to be a major threat at this time, and no other major threats are known.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
