Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various brightly colored tropical marine fishes of the family Scaridae, having fused teeth resembling a parrot's beak.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A name given to various fishes, principally of the families Labridæ and Scaridæ, on account of their colors or the shape of their jaws.
- noun A name given in Australia and elsewhere to Scarus pseudolabrus: called in the Australian tropics parrot-perch. In Victoria and Tasmania the name is also given to several species of Labrichthys. In New Zealand, the parrot-fish is Pseudolabrus miles psittacula.
- noun Same as
blue groper .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Any of several gaudy tropical fishes of the family
Scaridae having parrotlike beaks formed by fusion of teeth.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of several
tropical marine fish of the family Scaridae known for theirbeak -like mass of teeth used to scrapealgae from rocks or coral.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun gaudy tropical fishes with parrotlike beaks formed by fusion of teeth
Etymologies
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Examples
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The parrotfish should be the national bird of every atoll nation.
Jennifer Marohasy 2009
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Some of the best known bioeroders are large organisms such as parrotfish and sponges, but much of the bioerosion occurs at the microscopic scale by organisms such as algae and fungi.
Coral reef 2010
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Herbivorous species such as parrotfish, for instance, graze on the weedy turf algae that invade reef surfaces, thus preparing those surfaces for larval recruitment.
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The loss of algae-eating fish, such as parrotfish and surgeonfish, is worrying, says Paddack, because they help the reefs thrive by clearing away algae.
Resilience Science 2009
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Some were truly incredible — from the impossibly tiny-mouthed filefish (No. 32), to the blue parrotfish (No. 35) that looked like wet sapphire, to the 2-foot-long remora (No. 34) that Adler insisted could adhere to my belly and hang there (it did, and the sensation was like having a vacuum-cleaner hose with a thousand tiny needles at its end stuck to your skin).
The Mid-Life Slam 2009
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On the East Cape, beaches consist of parrotfish dung.
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"There are some locations where lionfish have totally altered the biodiversity of a reef," said James Morris, a NOAA ecologist at the agency's Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research in Beaufort, N.C. As a top predator, it consumes juvenile snapper and grouper along with algae-eating parrotfish, all of which help keep reefs healthy.
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Dr. Hay and fellow researchers catch parrotfish and surgeon fish and place them in the cages.
Under the Sea 2010
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Now, with more gastronomically desirable reef species such as grouper in decline from overfishing, parrotfish have become highly sought after.
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And that's ironic, Miller adds, given that parrotfish were once viewed as trash species to be avoided.
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