Description
🦓 Characteristics and appearance
- Distinctive stripes: The fish has a pale greyish or silvery-white body marked with 9 to 10 broad, dark, wedge-shaped vertical bars.
- Yellow fins: Its fins are characteristically a pale yellow color.
- Body shape: Girella zebra has a compressed, oval body, a blunt head, and a small mouth.
- Size: Adults typically reach a length of around 30 cm, but some individuals have been recorded up to 51 cm.
- Juveniles: Young fish are darker with less distinct bars, which can lead to confusion with the luderick (Girella tricuspidata).
🌊 Habitat and distribution
- Range: The species is native to and found exclusively in the coastal waters of southern Australia, including northern New South Wales, Tasmania, and Western Australia.
- Environment: It inhabits a variety of shallow water environments, including rocky reefs, sandy and weedy flats, estuaries, and protected offshore reefs.
- Depth: It is commonly found in waters up to 20 meters deep.
- Social behavior: The zebrafish is often found in schools of 5 to 30 individuals, particularly on sheltered reefs near boulder fields.
🍽️ Diet and feeding
- Herbivore: Girella zebra is an aquatic herbivore, feeding on algae and aquatic plants.
- Specialized teeth: It uses its small mouth and chisel-like teeth to scrape algae and invertebrates from the sea floor.
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