Mimic blenny
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| Plagiotremus tapeinosoma (Bleeker, 1857) |
The mimic blenny or piano fangblenny, Plagiotremus tapeinosoma, is a blenny of the genus Plagiotremus, with a wide-spread Indo-Pacific distribution including New Zealand from depths of a few metres to about 20 m. Its length is between 4 and 14 cm.
The mimic blenny has a scaleless skin and is a blunt-headed elongate fish with an underslung mouth full of small sharp teeth. A single dorsal fin runs the length of the body ending just before a slightly forked tail. The colouration is slightly variable, being generally green-brown above and silvery beneath with a row of square dark markings along each flank.
These fish do not rest on the bottom like other blennies but swim in open water with sinuous eel-like movements, often mixed with schools of other similar fish such as oblique-swimming triplefins and mimicking their actions, thence the common name. They wait for a larger fish to come within about a metre, then dash out to bite off a piece of fin or skin from the victim.
During the night or when danger threatens they retreat to rock holes vacated by rock boring mollusks or tube worms, much as the crested blenny does.
[edit] References
- Plagiotremus tapeinosoma (TSN 171210). Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Accessed on 11 March 2006.
- "Plagiotremus tapeinosoma". FishBase. Ed. Ranier Froese and Daniel Pauly. January 2006 version. N.p.: FishBase, 2006.
- Tony Ayling & Geoffrey Cox, Collins Guide to the Sea Fishes of New Zealand, (William Collins Publishers Ltd, Auckland, New Zealand 1982) ISBN 978-0-00-216987-5
