Spinecheek anemonefish
Premnas biaculeatus (Bloch, 1790)
Amphiprion biaculeatus, commonly known as spine-cheeked anemonefish or the maroon clownfish, is a species of anemonefish found in the Indo-Pacific from western Indonesia to Taiwan and the Great Barrier Reef. They can grow up to be about 17 cm (6.7 in).
Like all anemonefishes it forms a symbiotic mutualism with sea anemones and is unaffected by the stinging tentacles of the host anemone. It is a sequential hermaphrodite with a strict size-based dominance hierarchy; the female is largest, the breeding male is second largest, and the male nonbreeders get progressively smaller as the hierarchy descends. They exhibit protandry, meaning the breeding male changes to female if the sole breeding female dies, with the largest nonbreeder becoming the breeding male. The fish's natural diet includes algae and zooplankton.
Descriptions from checklists and floras indexed by GBIF
Introduced species vector dispersal
Chinese Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) Pathway/vector Other (Ornamental Trade)
World Register of Introduced Marine Species (WRiMS)
distribution
Distribution and habitat. New Ireland: 1, 2. — General distribution: Andaman Sea and Indonesia east to Philippines and Vanuatu, north to Sabah (Malaysia), south to Queensland (Australia). Commensal with sea anemones (Entacmaea quadricolor), 1 – 18 m depth. Marine.
Checklist of the marine and estuarine fishes of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, western Pacific Ocean, with 810 new records
materials_examined
Status at New Ireland. New record, based on a specimen photographed on 5 June 2013 during ACIAR Aquarium Survey in Kavieng District (see Teitelbaum et al. 2013: 14), and on USNM 281221 (2) from Nusa Island; specimens photographed at Lissenung Island, Kavieng region by Dietmar Amon; a video of specimens taken in Senta Passage, southeast of New Hanover at 5 – 16 m depth, St. KR 118, in 2014.
Checklist of the marine and estuarine fishes of New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea, western Pacific Ocean, with 810 new records
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
The characteristic that defines this genus is the spine on the cheek. The colors of the body and bars vary according to sex and geographic location. Despite the common name maroon clownfish, only some females have a maroon body color, with a range of color to dark brown. Juveniles and males are bright red-orange. The fish has three body bars which may be white, grey, or yellow. Where the female bars are grey, they can be "switched" rapidly to white if fish is provoked. The size-based dominance hierarchy means in any group of anemonefish, the female is always larger than the male. A significant difference in size is seen in this species, with females being one of the largest anemonefish, growing up to 17 cm (6.7 in) while males are much smaller, usually being 6–7 cm (2.4–2.8 in).
Color variations. The significant color variations for fish in this species are related to sex and geographic location. Male and juvenile fish are bright red-orange which darkens on the fish changing to female, ranging from maroon to dark brown. The body bars of the female are narrower and the body bars reportedly all but disappear in older females. At least three geographic variations in the color of females are found, with fish from East Timor to Australia retaining white body bars. In the central Malay Archipelago, the head bar tends towards a dull yellow, with the other two body bars being grey. …
Range & habitat
A. biaculeatus is found in the Malay Archipelago and Western Pacific Ocean north of the Great Barrier Reef.
Host anemones. The relationship between anemonefish and their host sea anemones is not random and instead is highly nested in structure. A. biaculeatus is highly specialized with only one species anemone host, Entacmaea quadricolor or the bubble-tip anemone, predominantly with the solitary form. The fish chooses the host and one of the primary drivers for host selection is thought to be competition. E. quadricolor is highly generalist, hosting at least 14 species, around half of all species of anemonefish. With such competition, A. biaculeatus is considered to be the most territorial of all anemonefish. Competition alone, though, does not explain the preference of A. biaculeatus for the solitary form of E. quadricolor. As A. biaculeatus is the largest clownfish species and highly specialized towards a single host species, it can usually outcompete other clownfish species for use of E. quadricolor. Unlike many other clownfish species, it is usually found as a single mated pair, not in a hierarchical group. Although it almost exclusively uses E. quadricolor, there has also been one record of it recruiting on Heteractis crispa in Madang, Papua New Guinea.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Premnas biaculeatus in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
From the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and occurrence records (GBIF.org), with Wikipedia and the Source Library. GBIF species 2398709.