A drab marbled parrotfish in a seagrass bed, which is already two departures from what a parrotfish is supposed to be. This species breaks nearly every rule of its family, and that is the reason it has a card.
It does not change sex. Every other parrotfish here starts female and turns male, complete with a change of color; this one has fixed sexes for life, and males and females look much the same.
It does not eat rock either. Instead of biting coral for the algae inside it, it crops seagrass and the fine weed growing on the blades, so it produces no sand at all - and it lives in beds and weedy shallows where no other parrotfish bothers to go.
It also lays eggs among the vegetation instead of spawning into open water in most of its range. Thirty-five centimeters (14 in) of parrotfish doing everything differently, in a habitat most divers swim over on the way to the reef.
The genus.Leptoscarus Swainson 1839 - leptos (thin or slender). ETYFish
How to recognise it
mottled green-brown, marbled rather than boldly colored
in seagrass rather than on coral
beak weaker and less fused than in reef parrotfishes
There are no major threats known for this species. However, in the Coral Triangle region, this species can be locally threatened by habitat destruction by dynamite fishing (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines), sedimentation, and coral bleaching events (G. Allen pers comm. 2009).
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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