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Lysmata amboinensis
This shrimp hatches from eggs and goes through an incomplete metamorphosis at 5–6 months of age. After their metamorphosis they will moult every 3–8 weeks. Each shrimp starts out as a male, but after a few moults will become a hermaphrodite and will function as both male and female. They will lay from 200–500 eggs in one spawning. Eggs appear on the hermaphroditic shrimps' pleopods and are greenish in colour; they swell and lighten in colour before hatching and a few will turn silver on the day of hatching. The eggs tend to hatch around dusk. It has been observed that fish with parasites may come to "cleaning stations" in the reef. Certain species of fish and several types of cleaner shrimp may assist the fish in large numbers and even go inside the mouth (and then to the gill cavity) without being eaten.
L. amboinensis is naturally part of the reef ecosystem, and is widespread in the Red Sea and tropical Indo-Pacific.
Image taken by me at the California Academy of Science with a Cannon digital camera.
Spotted on Jun 1, 2014
Submitted on Jan 19, 2015
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