Painted Comber

Photo: Adrien Lowenstein - Anaïs Berry · CC BY-NC

Colourful and bold, painted combers perch on amphora fragments and worked stone, their intricate blue and red marbled patterning making them easy to spot and photograph. Simultaneous hermaphrodites, each individual carries both male and female tissue and can fertilise eggs with a partner of any stage. They are voracious ambush predators that exploit the cover provided by the scattered archaeological material.