This shrimp lives on one thing, and that thing changes shape twice a day.
Bubble coral spends daylight inflated: the polyps push out grape-like vesicles full of water, spreading their symbiotic algae into the light until the whole colony looks like a heap of wet bubbles. After dark the bubbles go down and long feeding tentacles come out instead, and the coral turns into something with a completely different outline. The shrimp lives on that surface through both states, walking between the vesicles in daylight and among the tentacles at night, picking up mucus and scraps.
It is essentially invisible. The body is clear glass, and what you actually see, if you see anything, is a set of purple-white bands apparently walking on their own across the bubbles. Photographers find them by looking for the bands, not the shrimp.
It used to be filed in the genus Vir, and older books and dive guides still call it that.
- glass-clear body, visible mainly as the markings on its limbs
- purple-white bands on the legs and along the claw arms
- long slender claws held out in front
- found on bubble coral and effectively nowhere else
- up to 1.5 cm
