The Hawaiian butterflyfish (''Chaetodon tinkeri''), also known as Tinker's butterflyfish, is a marine ray-finned fish, a butterflyfish belonging to the

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

Chaetodontidae of

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

Perciformes. It is found in the central Pacific Ocean.

Description

It grows to a maximum length of . It swims alone or in pairs and occasionally in small aggregations. Its coloring is divided on the diagonal between black and white. It has gold dorsal and tail fins, and a gold vertical bar across its eyes. The

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through conv ...

has 13-14 spines and 18-22 soft rays while the anal fin has 3 spines and 16-18 soft rays. It attains a maximum total length of .

Range and habitat

This fish inhabits

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

Johnston Atoll Johnston Atoll is an Unincorporated territories of the United States, unincorporated territory of the United States, currently administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Johnston Atoll is a National Wildlife Refuge and ...

and the

Marshall Islands The Marshall Islands ( mh, Ṃajeḷ), officially the Republic of the Marshall Islands ( mh, Aolepān Aorōkin Ṃajeḷ),'' () is an independent island country and microstate near the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the Internati ...

in the tropical

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. It prefers steep slopes, near

black coral Antipatharians, also known as black corals or thorn corals, are an order of soft deep-water corals. These corals can be recognized by their jet-black or dark brown chitin skeletons, surrounded by the polyps (part of coral that is alive). Antip ...

s at depths of .

Feeding

The Hawaiian butterflyfish feeds on a variety of

planktonic Plankton are the diverse collection of organisms found in water (or air) that are unable to propel themselves against a current (or wind). The individual organisms constituting plankton are called plankters. In the ocean, they provide a crucia ...

and

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 ...

organisms.

Taxonomy and etymology

The Hawaiian butterflyfish was first formally described by the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

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 ...

Leonard Peter Schultz (1901-1986) in 1952 with the type locality given as Nanakuli on

Oahu Oahu () (Hawaiian language, Hawaiian: ''Oʻahu'' ()), also known as "The Gathering place#Island of Oʻahu as The Gathering Place, Gathering Place", is the third-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is home to roughly one million people—over t ...

in Hawaii. The specific name honours Spencer W. Tinker who discovered it in 1949, trapping them in fish traps at off Oahu, Hawaii.

In the aquarium

These fish are somewhat popular in aquaria.

References

Chaetodon Fish of Hawaii Fish described in 1951 {{Chaetodontidae-stub