The parrotfish a diver here sees most, and the one doing most of the work on the reef. Males are green-blue with pink-orange trim, females and young a dull rust-brown, and the two were long taken for different species.
It eats rock. The beak is a set of fused teeth backed by heavy jaw muscle, and the fish bites algae and its substrate together, grinding the mouthful in a mill of throat plates and passing the mineral part out as sand. Follow one for a few minutes and it will do this several times, and the trail of white clouds behind a feeding school is beach in production.
At night it does something stranger. The fish wedges into a crevice and secretes a transparent cocoon of mucus around itself, sealed except for openings that let water through. The cocoon masks its scent from night hunters and blocks parasites; building it takes half an hour, and the fish abandons it at dawn.
Like other parrotfish it starts female and can turn male, and the brightest fish on the reef is a fish that used to be a plain brown one.
The genus.Scarus Forsskål 1775 - skaros (ancient Greek name of Sparisoma cretense). ETYFish
The species.Scarus ferrugineus Forsskål 1775 - rust-colored. ETYFish
How to recognise it
males green-blue with pink-orange cheek and fin margins
females and young dull rust-brown, plainer
parrot beak of fused teeth, visible scrape marks left on coral
length up to 41 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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