Cheek-lined wrasse

Cheek-stripe - Prachtlippfisch ( Oxycheilinus digramma ), male

The cheek-stripe - Prachtlippfisch ( Oxycheilinus digramma ) lives in the Red Sea and tropical Indo-Pacific from East Africa to the Marshall Islands and Samoa.

Features

It resembles in its brawny shape a small grouper. Cheek stripe wrasse are 30 to 35 inches long. The long dorsal fin is supported by nine hard jets and ten soft rays, the anal fin has three hard - and eight to eleven soft rays. Juveniles are gray to reddish brown. Her tail and the female is yellow. Males are magnificently colored green blue and red. Her tail is blue. The cheek stripe wrasse resembles the black ring wrasse (C. unifasciatus ), but it always lacks the typical for this type of white tape on the back of the body and the parallel red lines behind the eyes.

Way of life

The cheek-stripe - Prachtlippfisch inhabited coral rich lagoons and outer reefs possibly to depths of 120 meters. The young fish stay longer in protected Riffbereichen near the coast, especially among soft corals and sessile, stinging hydroids. The fish mainly feed on hard-shelled invertebrates, such as mollusks, crustaceans, and sea urchins. The species has been observed here between groups of mullets to swim and to accept the color of these fish to camouflage itself. From the group of cheek-stripe - Prachtlippfisch exclaims suddenly to prey on smaller fish.