Joe Rowlett
  • Joe is classically trained in the zoological arts and sciences, with a particular focus on the esoterica of invertebrate taxonomy and evolution. He’s written for several aquarium publications and for many years lorded over the marinelife at Chicago’s venerable Old Town Aquarium. He currently studies prairie insect ecology at the Field Museum of Natural History and fish phylogenetics at the University of Chicago.

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Recent Content

This Schizophrenic Favites Is A Coral Rainbow

This Schizophrenic Favites Is A Coral Rainbow


There’s an early front-runner for this year’s Coral Of The Year award… this Favites, procured from Northern Australia by Monsoon Aquatics.

I’d wager this is Favites pentagona, or, at least, what aquarists typically identify as that species.

Symbiont Or Parasite, Meet The Enigmatic “corallicola”

Symbiont Or Parasite, Meet The Enigmatic “corallicola”


In 1986, a mysterious single-celled creature named
Gemmocystis cylindrus was discovered living within the tissue of several different Caribbean stony corals. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in a coral, and, unlike the zooxanthellae that fuel a coral’s metabolism, this enigmatic protist had no chloroplasts.

Rare Reef Fishes From The Seychelles

Rare Reef Fishes From The Seychelles


The Seychelles is home to a fascinating marine fauna, with somewhere around 900 reef-associated fish species documented from this small island nation. While much of this biodiversity can be found throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, there is a noteworthy percentage that is restricted to the Western Indian Ocean.

Aliaporcellana spongicola, A Colorful New Sponge-dwelling Porcelain Crab

Aliaporcellana spongicola, A Colorful New Sponge-dwelling Porcelain Crab


Porcelain crabs (Porcellanidae) are all too often an overlooked part of coral reef ecosystems. This is partly by design, as most of the 100+ recognized species are cryptic in nature, either camouflaging themselves innocuously against the rocks to which they so tightly cling or mimicking any number of soft corals or sponges or anemones.

Hybrid, Aberrant, Gynandromorph? The Faux-Zoster Dwarf Angelfish

Hybrid, Aberrant, Gynandromorph? The Faux-Zoster Dwarf Angelfish


This interesting
Centropyge is doing its very best impression of the Black Pyramid Butterflyfish (Hemitaurichthys zoster)… black on the head and tail, pale in the middle. It was collected somewhere in the Java Sea (not far from where the mysterious koi Centropyge was recently found) and is clearly some sort of variant involving the Pearlscale Angelfish (C.