''Chaetodon guentheri'', Günther's butterflyfish or the crochet butterflyfish, is a species of marine ray-finned fish, a butterflyfish belonging to the family Chaetodontidae. It is native to The western Pacific Ocean.

Description

''Chaetodon guentheri'' has a body which is mainly white to pale yellow in colour and marked with small dark spots which create a pattern of irregular lines. The posterior part of the body, the soft-rayed part of the dorsal fin and the

anal fin Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as se ...

are yellow. A vertical black bar runs through the eye. The background colour to the body is whitest towards the head and becomes yellow towards the back and tail. The dorsal and anal fins also have a white band on the margin with a thin black band to the inside of that. The dorsal fin has 13 spines and 21-22 soft rays, while the anal fin contains 3 spines and 18 soft rays. This species attains a maximum total length of .

Distribution

''Chaetodon guentheri'' is a species of the Western Pacific Ocean and it is found from southern Japan and Taiwan on the north south as far as New South Wales. It also occurs off Lord Howe Island, the Great Barrier Reef east to Tonga.

Habitat and biology

''Chaetodon guentheri'' is found on seaward reefs where there is a dense coral growth, at water depths from . They are normally solitary but will form schools, especially when making longer movements typically where there are strong currents. They are mostly found in areas of sponge growth and they prefer deeper waters where sponges grow in the tropics and can be found at shallower depths in temperate areas. Gunther's butterflyfish will move through open water and it is known to clean large pelagic fishes. It is an

oviparous Oviparous animals are animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive method of most fish, amphibians, most reptiles, and all pterosaurs, dinosaurs (including birds), and ...

species in which the males and females form pairs to breed. They feed on plankton. They also feed on soft and stony coral polyps, sea anemones, sponges, worms, tunicates, crustaceans and other

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

invertebrates

Taxonomy and etymology

''Chaetodon guentheri'' was first formally described in 1923 by the German zoologist Christoph Gustav Ernst Ahl (1898-1945) with the

type locality Type locality may refer to: * Type locality (biology) * Type locality (geology) See also * Local (disambiguation) * Locality (disambiguation) {{disambiguation ...

given as Manado on

Sulawesi Sulawesi (), also known as Celebes (), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the world's eleventh-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Mindanao and the Sulu Ar ...

in Indonesia. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

honours the German-born British zoologist,

ichthyologist Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish, including bony fish ( Osteichthyes), cartilaginous fish (Chondrichthyes), and jawless fish (Agnatha). According to FishBase, 33,400 species of fish had been described as of Octobe ...

, and herpetologist Albert Günther (1830-1914) who first described this species as '' C. miliaris'' in 1871.

Utilisation

''Chaetodon guentheri'' is rarely collected for the

aquarium An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aq ...

trade.

References

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q2180296 Fish described in 1923 Guentheri Marine fish of Southeast Asia