Three animals in one species. The juvenile is white with a broad orange band and a black spot on the dorsal fin. The female is dark brown in front and bright yellow behind, head dusted with dark speckles. The male is green with pink-edged scales and a pink stripe across the snout, and reaches 80 cm (32 in).
They are stages, not sexes and species. A fish grows through the juvenile pattern into a female, and a proportion of females later become males, changing color completely as they do - which is why old guidebooks list the phases as separate species and why photographs of the three are still mislabeled.
The beak grinds coral for the algae inside it, and what comes out the other end is sand: parrotfish are the reason a reef has a beach. A large adult processes several hundred kilos of it a year.
At night it wedges into a crevice and secretes a bag of mucus around itself - a sleeping bag that masks its scent from hunting morays and blocks parasites. Half an hour to build, abandoned every morning.
The genus.Cetoscarus Smith 1956 - Scarus (ancient Greek word for parrotfish). ETYFish
The species.Cetoscarus bicolor (Rüppell 1829) - bi-. ETYFish
How to recognise it
males green with pink-edged scales and a pink band across the snout
females dark brown-black in front, bright yellow behind, with a dusted head
juveniles white with a broad orange band and a black eye spot
length up to 80 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no major threats known for this species.
Parrotfishes show varying degrees of habitat preference and utilization of coral reef habitats, with some species spending the majority of their life stages on coral reefs, while others primarily utilize seagrass beds, mangroves, algal beds, and /or rocky reefs. Although the majority of the parrotfishes occur in mixed habitat (primarily inhabiting seagrass beds, mangroves, and rocky reefs) approximately 78% of these mixed habitat species are experiencing greater than 30% loss of coral reef area and habitat quality across their distributions. Of those species that occur exclusively in coral reef habitat, more than 80% are experiencing a greater than 30% of coral reef loss and degradation across their distributions. However, more research is needed to understand the long-term effects of habitat loss and degradation on these species populations. Widespread coral reef loss and declining habitat conditions are particularly worrying for species that depend on live coral reefs for food and shelter especially as studies have shown that protection of pristine habitats facilitate the persistence of adult populations in species that have spatially separated adult and juvenile habitats. Furthermore, coral reef loss and declining habitat conditions are particularly worrying for some corallivorous excavating parrotfishes that play major roles in reef dynamics and sedimentation (Comeros-Raynal et al. 2012).
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
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