COMMON NAMES: Violetline Parrotfish, Globehead Parrotfish, Brown Parrotfish, Round-head Parrotfish; German Rundkopf-Papageifisch; French Perroquet Masqué, Perroquet Globeux

TRADITIONAL NAMES: Pakati < Koti (PL); Other Polynesian - Paati Nanao (TAH), Hou Ninamu (TAH-L)

GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION: NATIVE e.Africa - Societies; n. to s.Japan; s. to New Caledonia - Rapa

COOK ISLANDS STATUS: Native; Clear lagoons and reef-flats, as well as forereef slopes to around 15m. PLUS: Rare PL (Anon88), not elsewhere.; Marine, near-shore, outer reef-slope (sometimes in lagoons)

KEY FEATURES: To 25cm SL, depth 2.5 time into length; lips nearly cover dental plates, tp with 1-2 canoes on both plates; tail truncate in ip and lobed in tp. INITIAL PHASE (IP) nearly uniform grey-brown (like Scarus psittacus), sometimes with pale grey bars and patches; TERMINAL MALES (TP) blue-green; forming a distinctive maze-like pattern of spots and dashes on top of head and Dorsal body; upper lip, chin and cheek (below eye) uniformly pale blue.

SIMILAR SPECIES: INITIAL PHASE NOT distinguishable in the field from Palenose Parrotfish (Scarus psittacus) and Quoy's Parrotfish (Scarus quoyi) - separated by scale counts and fin ray counts. TERMINAL MALES similar to Quoy's Parrotfish which has green lips and cheeks (vs pale blue lips and cheeks).