inshore waters. In the Azores adults of this species is normally not encountered above depths of , although juveniles may be found at shallower depths occasionally. They are normally found occurring as solitary individuals or in pairs with young. They are oviparous and the female can lay up to a thousand eggs in a dish-shaped nest made by the male from algae, which he then guards. The cuckoo wrasse is a protogynous hermaphrodite, and females can change sex into males, a process which takes around seven months. The diet consists mainly of crustaceans but it will also take fishes, molluscs and worms/ Etymology and species description The name cuckoo wrasse comes from Cornish fishermen who associated the blue markings with bluebell flowers. In the Cornish language, a bluebell is bleujenn an gog, literally "the cuckoo flower". The cuckoo wrasse was formally described by Carolus Linnaeus in the 10th edition of his Systema Naturae published in 1758, Linnaeus gave the type locality as "Liburnia", which is modern Dalmatia, Croatia. Human usage The cuckoo wrasse is occasionally eaten but wrasse flesh is not popular in many places, for example in Britain, so it is not much in demand from commercial fisheries. It is fished by recreational anglers and, as they are long lived fish their populations can be affected by too high a catch, they are fished for on a catch and release basis. In Norway, cuckoo wrasse (along with other wrasse species) are used in salmon farming to eat salmon lice from the farmed fish. This leads to overfishing in some areas, and a noticeable decrease in population in selected areas. References External links cuckoo wrasse Fish of the East Atlantic Fish of the Mediterranean Sea cuckoo wrasse cuckoo wrasse