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Ocellaris clownfish — printable fact sheet
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Ocellaris clownfish
Amphiprion ocellaris
Amphiprion ocellaris is a protandrous sequential hermaphrodite: every fish is born male, and each anemone holds a strict size-based hierarchy with one large breeding female at the top, a smaller breeding male below her, and a queue of sexually suppressed non-breeders. When the f…
Did you know?
- Every Ocellaris clownfish group has a strict social hierarchy, and when the female dies, the dominant male transforms into a female to take her place.
- Non-breeding subordinates deliberately stay small, growing only to a fixed fraction of the fish above them, because outgrowing your superior triggers eviction from the anemone, and eviction on a reef is a death sentence. Clownfish eggs are laid on a flat rock right beside the anemone and guarded and fanned by the male, who does almost all the parental care. Amphiprion ocellaris was one of the first marine ornamental fish to be bred commercially at scale, so most sold today are captive-bred rather than reef-caught — a rare good-news story in the aquarium trade.
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