Wrasse
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 Painted Wrasse, Crenilabrus tinca
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Acantholabrus |
- For other uses, see Wrasse (disambiguation).
The wrasses are a family, Labridae, of marine fish, many of which are brightly colored. The family is large and diverse, with about 500 species in 60 genera.
Some species are popular aquarium fish; others are popular food fish. In the western Atlantic, the most commonly eaten is the tautog. In the eastern Atlantic, the term 'wrasse' by itself generally refers to the Ballan wrasse, Labrus bergylta.
Wrasses have protractile mouths, usually with separate jaw teeth that jut outwards. The dorsal fin has 8 – 21 spines and 6 – 21 soft rays, usually running most of the length of the back.
Some wrasses are widely known for their role as symbiotic fish, similar to the actions and those ascribed to the Egyptian plover: other fish will congregate at wrasse cleaning stations and wait for wrasses to swim into their open mouths and gill cavities to have gnathiid parasites removed. The cleaner wrasses are most well known to feed on dead tissue and scales and ectoparasites although they are also known to 'cheat' through the removal of healthy tissue and mucus which is costly for the client fish to produce. The bluestreak cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus is one of the most common cleaners found on tropical reefs. Few cleaner wrasses have been observed being eaten by predators, possibly because the removal of parasites from the predator fish is more important for the survival of the predator than the short-term gain of eating the cleaner (see Trivers, R. L. 1971).
Other species of wrasse, rather than having fixed cleaning stations, specialize in making "house calls" - that is, their "clientele" are those fish that are too territorial or shy to go to a cleaning station.
[edit] Aquaria
Some brightly-colored wrasses are popular for salt-water aquaria. They are reef safe.
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