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Cleaner fish are used to eat parasitic sea lice from salmon to reduce outbreaks which cause disease in populations. The two most commonly used cleaner fish are the lumpfish, Cyclopterus lumpus, and the ballan wrasse Labrus bergeylta.
Cleaning symbiosis is a mutually beneficial association between individuals of two species, where one (the cleaner) removes and eats parasites and other materials from the surface of the other (the client). Cleaning symbiosis is well-known among marine fish, where some small species of cleaner fish, notably wrasses but also species in other ...
Cleaner wrasses are the best-known of the cleaner fish. They live in a cleaning symbiosis with larger, often predatory, fish, grooming them and benefiting by consuming what they remove. "Client" fish congregate at wrasse "cleaning stations" and wait for the cleaner fish to remove gnathiid parasites, the cleaners even swimming into their open ...
Bluestreak cleaner wrasses clean to consume ectoparasites on client fish for food. The bigger fish recognise them as cleaner fish because they have a lateral stripe along the length of their bodies, and by their movement patterns. Cleaner wrasses greet visitors in an effort to secure the food source and cleaning opportunity with the client.
The Hawaiian cleaner wrasse or golden cleaner wrasse (Labroides phthirophagus), is a species of wrasse (genus Labroides) found in the waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands. The fish is endemic to Hawaii. These cleaner fish inhabit coral reefs, setting up a territory referred to as a cleaning station.
An example of reciprocal altruism is cleaning symbiosis, such as between cleaner fish and their hosts, though cleaners include shrimps and birds, and clients include fish, turtles, octopuses and mammals.
Examples of this include ectoparasites such as lice; commensal ectosymbionts such as the barnacles, which attach themselves to the jaw of baleen whales; and mutualist ectosymbionts such as cleaner fish.
Some species use cleaner fish to remove external parasites. The best known of these are the bluestreak cleaner wrasses of coral reefs in the Indian and Pacific oceans. These small fish maintain cleaning stations where other fish congregate and perform specific movements to attract the attention of the cleaners.
The crimson cleaner fish (Suezichthys aylingi), or butcher's dick in Australia, is a species of wrasse native to the southwestern Pacific Ocean around Australia and New Zealand. This species inhabits patches of sand on reefs at depths of from 6 to 100 metres (20 to 328 ft). It is a cleaner fish.
As an example of the adaptations made by reef fish, the yellow tang is a herbivore which feeds on benthic turf algae. They also provide cleaner services to marine turtles, by removing algal growth from their shells. They do not tolerate other fish with the same colour or shape.