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WrassesSea Animal

The wrasses are a family, Labridae, of marine fish, many of which are brightly colored. The family is large and diverse, with over 600 species in 81 genera, which are divided into 9 subgroups or tribes.

Family: Labridae; G. Cuvier, 1816

Scientific name: Labridae

Order: Labriformes

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Actinopterygii

Rank: Family

The wrasses are a family, Labridae, of marine fish, many of which are brightly colored. The family is large and diverse, with over 600 species in 81 genera, which are divided into 9 subgroups or tribes.

They are typically small fish, most of them less than 20 cm (7.9 in) long, although the largest, the humphead wrasse, can measure up to 2.5 m (8.2 ft). They are efficient carnivores, feeding on a wide range of small invertebrates.

Many smaller wrasses follow the feeding trails of larger fish, picking up invertebrates disturbed by their passing.

Juveniles of some representatives of the genera Bodianus, Epibulus, Cirrhilabrus, Oxycheilinus, and Paracheilinus hide among the tentacles of the free-living mushroom coral Heliofungia actiniformis.

The word "wrasse" comes from the Cornish word wragh, a lenited form of gwragh, meaning an old woman or hag, via Cornish dialect wrath. It is related to the Welsh gwrach and Breton gwrac

Biology of Wrasses
Reproductive behavior
Most labrids are protogynous hermaphrodites within a haremic mating system. A good example of this reproductive behavior is seen in the California sheep head.

Hermaphroditism allows for complex mating systems. Labroids exhibit three different mating systems: polygynous, lek-like, and promiscuous .

Group spawning and pair spawning occur within mating systems. The type of spawning that occurs depends on male body size.

Labroids typically exhibit broadcast spawning, releasing high numbers of planktonic eggs, which are broadcast by tidal currents; adult labroids have no interaction with offspring. Wrasses of a particular subgroup of the family Labridae, Labrini, do not exhibit broadcast spawning.

Sex change in wrasses is generally female-to-male, but experimental conditions have allowed for male-to-female sex change.

Placing two male Labroides dimidiatus wrasses in the same tank results in the smaller of the two becoming female again.

Additionally, while the individual to change sex is generally the largest female, evidence also exists of the largest female instead "choosing" to remain female in situations in which she can maximize her evolutionary fitness by refraining from changing sex.

Broodcare behavior of the tribe
The subgroup Labrini arose from a basal split within family Labridae during the Eocene period. Subgroup Labrini is composed of eight genera, wherein 15 of 23 species exhibit broodcare behavior, which ranges from simple to complex

parental care of spawn; males build algae nests or crude cavities, ventilate eggs, and defend nests against conspecific males and predators.

In species that express this behavior, eggs cannot survive without parental care. Species of Symphodus, Centrolabrus, and Labrus genera exhibit broodcare behavior.

Cleaner wrasse
Cleaner wrasses are the best-known of the cleaner fish. They live in a cleaning symbiosis with larger, often predatory, fish, grooming them and benefiting by consuming what they remove. "Client" fish congregate at wrasse

"cleaning stations" and wait for the cleaner fish to remove gnathiid parasites, the cleaners even swimming into their open mouths and gill cavities to do so. A single wrasse works for around four hours a day, and in that time, it can inspect more than 2,000 clients.

Cleaner wrasses are best known for feeding on dead tissue and scales and ectoparasites, although they are also known to 'cheat', consuming healthy tissue and mucus, which is energetically 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 parasite removal is more important for predator survival than the short-term gain of eating the cleaner.

When cleaner wrasses were experimentally removed from a reef in Australia, the total number of fish species halved, and their numbers fell by three-quarters. Also, some evidence, from another Australian study, shows that cleaned fish are smarter than those not served by the wrasse.