The parrot seaperch was first formally described as Lepimphis ruber in 1810 by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque with its type locality given as Palermo on Sicily.

[3] In 1839 Richard Thomas Lowe described a new species from Madeira which he assigned to a new monospecific genus called Callanthius paradisaeus.

[2] The parrot seaperch is found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean where its distribution extends from the English Channel, where it is infrequently recorded south to Mauritania, including the Macaronesian Islands and the Great Meteor Seamount, and throughout the Mediterranean Sea.

[9] On the Seine seamount the parrot seaperch was found to have a diet dominated by small pelagic copepods.

[10] The parrot seaperch is targeted by recreational anglers and artisanal fisheries, and it is taken as bycatch by commercial trawlers in Sicily but only in Morocco is it regularly found in fish markets.