Family Wrasses Essay

The Family Labridae is a massive family of fishes (trumped only by gobies). Some of these fishes, commonly known as wrasses, are amongst the perennial favorites in the marine aquarium industry. Chances are that if you remain involved with marine aquaria for any length of time, you will eventually come to own a wrasse. Here are the basics of this diverse and extraordinary family of fishes.

Wrasses can be found throughout the Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific in both temperate and tropical seas. Many are reef-associated, and many fulfill important ecological functions within the ecosystems in which they live. Quite certainly, may wrasses have yet to be formally described, and, given color variations amongst conspecifics from different regions, not to mention hybridization, there remains plenty of disagreement as to this family's taxonomical hierarchy. An entire book could be filled with information on wrasses, and many additional volumes would then quickly become essential-as such, this article should only be construed as the briefest of overviews with a bias toward those genera most …show more content…
All wrasses, for example, possess a protrusible jaw, meaning that the jaw can be extended or protruded to form a sort of tube or scoop to aid in specialized feeding. The slingjaw wrasse (Epibulus insidiator), for example, can extend its upper and lower jaw to more than half of the fish's overall length in order to create an elongate tube perfect for feeding on crustaceans (and sometimes even small fishes) amongst the nooks and crannies of the reef. Many aquarists have witnessed this feeding behavior from wrasses in their own aquaria, and many aquarists have also seen their wrasses use this anatomical characteristic in territorial interactions amongst conspecifics. This protrusable jaw is indeed a defining characteristic of the family, whose scientific name-Labridae-is, after all, derived from the Latin word for