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Gymnothorax favagineus Nature Photo

Tags: fish | Gymnothorax favagineus | Honeycomb Moray | Laced Moray | Tesselate Eel

Gymnothorax favagineus, also known as Tessalate Eel, Honeycomb Moray, or  Laced Moray mainly inhabits shallow reefs, caves, and cracks of reefs. It feeds on fish. The markings on the Moray Eel vary greatly with location, size, and communities. Cleaner animals such as Cleaner Wrasses (Labroides dimidiatus) and Cleaner Shrimps (Lysmata Amboinensis) are usually found near the habitat of large Laced Morays, where they clean pests such as fish lice and copepods on the morays’ bodies or in their mouths. Widely distributed in warm waters in the Indo-West Pacific, including South Africa, Red Sea, Oman, Maldives, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia’s Great Barrier Reefs. Found near coral reefs around Taiwan. Often marketed fresh in seafood restaurants, or processed into food after being dried. Large morays are very appealing to visitors when displayed in aquariums. (Photograph by: Cheng Ching-yi, Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica; Location: Lanyu)

Biodiversity Research Center