The Hawaiian butterflyfish (''Chaetodon tinkeri''), also known as Tinker's butterflyfish, is a marine ray-finned fish, a butterflyfish belonging to the
family 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 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,
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 in the tropical
Pacific Ocean. It prefers steep slopes, near
black corals 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 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 in Hawaii.[
]
In the aquarium
These fish are somewhat popular in aquaria.
References
Chaetodon
Fish of Hawaii
Fish described in 1951
{{Chaetodontidae-stub