The ornate ghost pipefish or harlequin ghost pipefish, ''Solenostomus paradoxus'', is a false pipefish of 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 ...

Solenostomidae ''Solenostomus'', also known as the ghost pipefishes, false pipefishes or tubemouth fishes, is a genus of fishes in the order Syngnathiformes. ''Solenostomus'' is the only genus in the family Solenostomidae, and includes six currently recognized ...

. The species name comes from the Greek ''paradoxos'', referring to this fish's unusual external features. Ornate ghost pipefish are found in the Western

Pacific 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 ...

and the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by th ...

along reef edges prone to strong currents from the

Red Sea The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

. They reach a maximum length of 12 cm. They vary in color from red or yellow to black and are almost transparent. Although relatively common, ornate ghost pipefish are very well-camouflaged and difficult to find.Dianne J Bray & Vanessa J Thompson, 2011, Ornate Ghostpipefish, Solenostomus paradoxus, in Fishes of Australia, accessed 07 Oct 2014, http://www.fishesofaustralia.net.au/home/species/3165 It occurs either as solitary individuals or in pairs, among the branches of gorgonians, in floating weeds, or

crinoids Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms are called feather stars or comatulids, which are ...

where the feed on

mysid Mysida is an order of small, shrimp-like crustaceans in the malacostracan superorder Peracarida. Their common name opossum shrimps stems from the presence of a brood pouch or "marsupium" in females. The fact that the larvae are reared in thi ...

s and small

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 ...

shrimp. The IUCN conservation status of ''Solenostomus paradoxus'' has been evaluated as "

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

References

External links

* Solenostomus Fish described in 1770 Taxa named by Peter Simon Pallas Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN {{Syngnathiformes-stub