Description

The Saddleback Clownfish or Yellowfin Anemonefish (Amphiprion Polymnus), is a black and white species of Anemonefish with a distinctive saddle. Like all Anemonefishes it forms a symbiotic mutualism with sea anemones and is unaffected by the stinging tentacles of the host anemone. It is a sequential hermaphrodite with a strict sized based dominance hierarchy: the female is largest, the breeding male is second largest, and the male non-breeders get progressively smaller as the hierarchy descends. They exhibit protandry, meaning the breeding male will change to female if the sole breeding female dies, with the largest non-breeder becoming the breeding male.

The Saddleback Clownfish or Yellowfin Anemonefish is a small sized fish which grows up to 5.1″ inches. Its body has a stock appearance, oval shape, compressed laterally and with a round profile. The body color ranges from dark brown to yellow orange and this species has two or three white bars. The white head bar is thick and located just behind the eyes. A large white abbreviated saddle shape or slanted white bar across the middle of the fish’s body makes it quite obvious to see how it got the name Saddleback. The external edge of the caudal and the anal fins are underlined with a white line. The snout and the pectoral fin are in any case of color variation orange yellow to brownish orange.