Heteroclinus perspicillatus, known commonly as the Common weedfish in Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, is a species of clinid

Clinid

Clinids are blennioids; perciform marine fish of the family Clinidae. Temperate blennies, the family ranges from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, in both the Southern and Northern Hemisphere...

 in the genus Heteroclinus

Heteroclinus

Heteroclinus is a genus of clinids found in the western Indo-Pacific.-Species:* Adelaide's weedfish, Heteroclinus adelaidae * Natal weedfish, Heteroclinus antinectes...

. It is a temperate

Temperate

In geography, temperate or tepid latitudes of the globe lie between the tropics and the polar circles. The changes in these regions between summer and winter are generally relatively moderate, rather than extreme hot or cold...

 blenny found in rocky reef

Reef

In nautical terminology, a reef is a rock, sandbar, or other feature lying beneath the surface of the water ....

s around southern Australia, in the eastern Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

. It was named by Achille Valenciennes

Achille Valenciennes

Achille Valenciennes was a French zoologist.Valenciennes was born in Paris, and studied under Georges Cuvier. Valenciennes' study of parasitic worms in humans made an important contribution to the study of parasitology...

 in 1836, originally under the name Clinus perspicillatus, and can reach a maximum length of 20 centimetres. Blennies in this species feed primarily off of zoobenthos, and are preyed upon by bony fish including Platycephalus laevigatus, Asymbolus vincenti, and Gymnapistes marmorarus.