Length .50 of an inch, elliptical, as is the usual shape of the Lymacodes group, nearly .20 of an inch high and about the same width. The dorsum has four lines of purplish black alternating with white, and bordered outside with yellowish white or pale yellow. The region of the subdorsal line is a bright vermillion ridge with yelrowish white tubercles arising from joints 2, 3, 4, 7, 10 and 12, those on joint 2 moderately short, but those on joints 4 to 12 are nearly one fourth of an inch long; all of them spiny. There are short bunches of spines on the intervening joints, as it were representatives of missing tubercles. In the subdorsal space are four scarlet lines alternating with lines of yellowish white, the middle yellowish line instead of being continuous, consists of alternate blotches of vermilion and yellowish white. The substigmatar line is vermilion, bordered as the subdorsai with pale yellow, and this also has its row of yellowish white spiny tubercles, each about one sixteenth of an inch long. Below this is a single dark purple line bordered each side with a lighter shade, and below this a vermilion line or rather a series of tubercles without spines in place of the prolegs. Legs 6, no prolegs, but the under side of the body consisting of a muscular pad upon which the insect glides along instead of walking. Head brown, retractile when at rest into the joint back of it.
Early ontogenesis of the angelfish, Pterophyllum scalare Schultze, 1823 (Cichlidae)