[3] The blennies are generally bright yellow in colour, and males have black heads.

[1] In 1960, Wolfgang Klausewitz described the species, originally assigning it to the genus Tripterygion under "T.

[5] The fish is named in honor of Austrian biologist Erich F. Abel (1919-1995) of the University of Vienna, who worked on the ecology and ethology of fishes of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and who donated the type specimens from the Red Sea to the Senckenberg Museum.

The yellow triplefin is a tropical blenny found in coral reefs located in the western Indian Ocean; in the Red Sea, the East African coast, KwaZulu-Natal, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros and St. Brandon Shoals.

[3] Due to a lack of major threats to the species, and its wide distribution, the IUCN redlist ranked it as "Least Concern" in 2009.