Small but very cool: the Urchin Bumblebee Shrimp

Today i was lucky enough to find this little critter: Gnathophyllides mineri – the Urchin Bumblebee Shrimp. It grows to about 1 cm in size and lives on the Cake Urchin (Tripneustes gratilla). The cake urchin has spines and sticky arms – which collect rocks, leaves and pieces of plastic or whatever else is laying on the seafloor. So to find these shrimp you first have to take the decoration of the sea urchin. And then, if you are lucky, you can find the Urchin Bumblebee Shrimp holding on to one of the spines of the urchin. Compared to other Urchin shrimps, the Gnathophyllides mineri is not longer (rather the opposite), but thicker.