A shrimp flattened from above rather than from the sides, which is unusual, and the shape is the whole explanation: it lives pressed into the gaps between coral branches, where a normally built shrimp would not fit.
Branching coral heads are small cities. The same colony holds guard crabs that fight off crown-of-thorns starfish, coral gobies, a scorpionfish or two, and several species of shrimp including this one - all of them living on the coral's mucus, on trapped particles, and on each other's leftovers, and all of them dependent on the colony staying alive.
That is the fragile part. When branching corals bleach and die, this whole community goes with them, and the loss is invisible from outside: the skeleton is still standing.
Three centimeters (1.2 in), transparent with stripes. Torch into the middle of a Pocillopora head and something will move.
- body flattened top to bottom, unusually so for a shrimp
- transparent with brown or reddish stripes along the back
- always inside a branching coral, never in the open
- length up to 3 cm
