Stiphodon is a genus of small, brightly colored gobies found on tropical Indo-Pacific islands, with the atlas's 15 species drawn from Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Australia, China, and France (via its Pacific territories). Most species stay under about 2.5 in and live in fast, clear, rocky freshwater streams high on volcanic or mountainous islands, where they graze algae from stones with a specialized scraping mouth. Like many gobies on isolated islands, they are amphidromous: larvae hatch in the stream and are swept out to sea, then the surviving juveniles migrate back upstream, often climbing wet rock faces and waterfalls using a pelvic fin fused into a sucking disc, a feat shared with related climbing gobies.
Males of several species are strikingly patterned in neon blues and greens, which has made a handful of species popular with specialist nano and biotope aquarists, including the blue neon goby (a name shared by Stiphodon atropurpureus and S. caeruleus), green riffle goby (S. elegans), orange-fin stiphodon (S. maculidorsalis), and ornate cling goby (S. ornatus). They are demanding fish in the aquarium, needing strong flow, high oxygen, and a steady supply of algae or biofilm rather than typical flake food. The genus's reliance on short, fast-flowing island streams and an unbroken path to the sea makes it especially exposed to damming and stream degradation, reflected in the two species here listed as Critically Endangered.