It builds its own house, piece by piece, out of material it carries in its mouth.
A sandtilefish excavates a burrow in open sand and then roofs and armors it with rubble: broken coral, shell fragments and small stones, collected one at a time and carried back, sometimes from several meters away. The result is a low mound with a tunnel underneath, and a pair may work on the same one for a long period, adding to it and repairing what current and storms take off.
The mound is not only theirs. A pile of stable rubble on open sand is rare and valuable, and gobies, shrimps, brittle stars and small crabs move into the structure, so one fish's construction ends up housing a small community. Animals that build things other species use are called ecosystem engineers, and on a sand flat, where nothing else provides structure at all, the effect is out of proportion to the animal.
Above ground it is a slim pale fish hovering a hand's width off the bottom, usually in pairs, feeding on small animals in the water and dropping straight down the hole when anything approaches.
The dark streak in the middle of the tail is what it is named for.
The genus. Malacanthus Cuvier 1829 - malakos (soft) + acanthus (thorn or spine). ETYFish
The species. Malacanthus brevirostris Guichenot 1848 - brevis (short) + rostris (snout). ETYFish
- pale slender body with a dark streak in the middle of the tail
- hovers just above the sand and drops into a hole under a pile of rubble
- usually in pairs over open bottom
- up to 32 cm
Why it's threatened
There are no known major threats.
Threat classification from the IUCN Red List.
