page_title: Fish coloration
section_title: Specific mechanisms by color
hierarchical_section_title: Fish coloration / Mechanisms / Specific mechanisms by color
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Un labre pourpre Thalassoma purpureum à la Réunion. English: Thalassoma purpureum seen in La Réunion.
context_page_description: Fish coloration, a subset of animal coloration, is extremely diverse. Fish across all taxa vary greatly in their coloration through special mechanisms, mainly pigment cells called chromatophores. Fish can have any colors of the visual spectrum on their skin, evolutionarily derived for many reasons. There are three factors to coloration, brightness, hue, and saturation. Fish coloration has three proposed functions: thermoregulation, intraspecific communication, and interspecific communication. Fishes' diverse coloration is possibly derivative of the fact that "fish most likely see colors very differently than humans".
context_section_description: Black: produced by melanin granules dispersing inside the melanophore
  Gray and brown: produced by melanin granules concentrating inside the melanophore
  White: appears from light reflected by crystals of guanine in iridophores and leucophores
  Red, orange, yellow: produced by carotenoids that come from fish's diet
  Green, blue, violet: (generally) structural colors produced by the reflection and refraction of light by the skin and scale layers
  An example of a family of fish that is widely known for their highly varied and bright coloration are the Labridae (wrasses) and Scaridae (parrotfish). These fishes are known to possess all of the above pigments in different ratios depending on where they live in relation to the coral reef environment. Different wavelengths, and thus different colors, travel differently and therefore appear differently depending on the depth of the water and the things on which they are reflecting.
caption: Thalassoma purpureum, of the family Labridae showing bright and varied coloration.
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