It was once a species confined to the Red Sea but it has colonised the Suez Canal and the south-eastern Mediterranean by Lessepsian migration.

The Red Sea goby is marked with many dark vertical spots which have reddish brown edges on a cream background colour.

[5] It was described by Paul Chabanaud in 1933 from type specimens collected in Lake Timsah on the Suez Canal from where it obviously entered the Mediterranean Sea where it was first recorded in Bardawil Lagoon, Egypt, in 1986.

[6][4] The Red Sea goby can be found on sandy substrates in inshore, shallow waters where it feeds on harpacticoid copepods and nematodes, as well as oligochaetes, gastropods and other meiofauna.

Females of 2.7–3.25 centimetres (1.06–1.28 in) SL carry 305–408 eggs;[7] it is a repeat spawner with an extended breeding season.