This goby lives on a single whip coral and never leaves it. The whip is a black coral, a bare wire two or three meters long standing in current, and the fish spends its whole life on that one strand, moving up and down it and taking plankton out of the water going past.
Staying there is a problem, since a smooth wire in current offers nothing to hold. Gobies solve it with the pelvic fins, which in this family are fused into a suction cup under the chest. The fish clamps on and stays clamped.
The eggs are the interesting part. There is nowhere on a whip coral to put a clutch, so the pair makes somewhere: they graze a patch of the coral's living tissue off the skeleton and lay the eggs directly onto the cleared wire, then guard the bare patch until they hatch. The host is damaged deliberately, in a small way, to serve as a nursery.
Pairs are usually a male and a female, occasionally with a smaller third fish, and if one of the pair is lost the survivor can change sex to replace it.
The genus. Bryaninops Smith 1959 - ṓps (eye or face). ETYFish
The species. Bryaninops yongei (Davis & Cohen 1969) - Honours British marine zoologist Maurice Yonge. ETYFish
- almost transparent body with a line of white marks along the spine
- reddish-brown to violet head and pink-violet eyes
- clamped to a whip coral by a sucker formed from the fused pelvic fins
- usually a pair on one whip, sometimes with a smaller third fish
- up to 3.5 cm
Why it's threatened
The species may be found in the aquarium trade, however, the extent of this is not known. No other major threats are known.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
