This shrimp does not have a name, which is a strange thing to be able to say about an animal that thousands of divers have photographed.
Karplus, Szlep and Tsurnamal used the name Alpheus rubromaculatus in a paper in 1981 while describing the partnership between this shrimp and its goby. But a scientific name only exists once it has been published with a formal description meeting the rules, and that never happened. The World Register of Marine Species therefore lists the name as a nomen nudum, a naked name: the animal is real, the name attached to it is not valid, and the species is still waiting to be properly described more than forty years later.
What it does is well understood even if its name is not. It digs and maintains a burrow in sand and rubble and shares it with the whitecap goby, which stands guard while the shrimp works. It is a striking animal for an alpheid, translucent white with hard red spots, and it comes out of the hole often enough to be photographed easily, unlike its partner.
- translucent white body with sharp red spots and blotches
- one claw enlarged into a snapping claw
- pushing loads of sand out of a burrow entrance
- a whitecap goby hovering above the same hole
- up to 5 cm
