''Assessor flavissimus'', the yellow devilfish or yellow scissortail, is a fish from the western Central

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

, recorded from the

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system, composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

and Papua New Guinea. It occasionally makes its way into the aquarium trade. It grows to a size of in length. It is bright yellow in colour and has a reddish-orange stripe running from the eye to the upper edge of the operculum, and a reddish-orange band on the

dorsal Dorsal (from Latin ''dorsum'' ‘back’) may refer to: * Dorsal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location referring to the back or upper side of an organism or parts of an organism * Dorsal, positioned on top of an aircraft's fuselage The fus ...

and

anal fin Fins are moving appendages protruding from the body of fish that interact with water to generate thrust and help the fish swim. Apart from the tail or caudal fin, fish fins have no direct connection with the back bone and are supported o ...

s which is parallel to the fin margin. This species feeds on plankton and forms small groups under overhangs and ledges and in crevices, often swimming upside down. The males

mouthbrood Mouthbrooding, also known as oral incubation and buccal incubation, is the care given by some groups of animals to their offspring by holding them in the mouth of the parent for extended periods of time. Although mouthbrooding is performed by a va ...

, guarding the eggs in their mouths.

References

flavissimus Fish described in 1976 {{Plesiopidae-stub