Clownfish — Captive-bred mainstream · 149

Anemone-dwelling damselfish whose 2003 film fame became a capture-and-reef case study. Pixar Nemo is styled on Amphiprion ocellaris (this atlas type). Shops still mix ocellaris and percula under one common name. A group is a female, a breeding male and non-breeders. If the female dies, the male changes sex. The film missing-mother plot skipped that rule.

Several trade analyses reported a demand spike after 2003. Captive-bred ocellaris later absorbed much of the legal market in the US and EU. The fish mucus lacks the cues that trigger nematocysts, and acclimation behaviour matters. It is not a cartoon handshake. Fish may linger on a dying anemone and then vanish from that site. Reef heatwaves are a housing crisis for the genus.

Are clownfish good parents in the film sense? Males tend the nest of demersal eggs. The biology is paternal care, not a transoceanic search. Eastern Indian and western Pacific reefs -- Andaman to the Philippines and Australia north -- not a Sydney Harbour suburban anemone. Captive-bred ocellaris cut some wild take. It does not rebuild bleached hosts or stop cyanide fishing of other reef species sold beside them.