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Cleaner fish. Cleaner fish are fish that show a specialist feeding strategy [1] by providing a service to other species, referred to as clients, [2] by removing dead skin, ectoparasites, and infected tissue from the surface or gill chambers. [2] This example of cleaning symbiosis represents mutualism and cooperation behaviour, [3] an ecological ...
Cleaning symbiosis is a relationship between a pair of animals of different species, involving the removal and subsequent ingestion of ectoparasites, diseased and injured tissue, and unwanted food items from the surface of the host organism (the client) by the cleaning organism (the cleaner). [5] Its status has been debated by biologists, with ...
The remora ( / ˈrɛmərə / ), sometimes called suckerfish or sharksucker, is any of a family ( Echeneidae) of ray-finned fish in the order Carangiformes. [4] Depending on species, they grow to 30–110 cm (12–43 in) long. Their distinctive first dorsal fins take the form of a modified oval, sucker-like organ with slat-like structures that ...
The bluestreak cleaner wrasse ( Labroides dimidiatus) is one of several species of cleaner wrasses found on coral reefs from Eastern Africa and the Red Sea to French Polynesia. Like other cleaner wrasses, it eats parasites and dead tissue off larger fishes ' skin in a mutualistic relationship that provides food and protection for the wrasse ...
The pilot fish's relationship with sharks is a mutualist one; the pilot fish gains protection from predators, while the shark gains freedom from parasites. It was often said by sailors that sharks and pilot fish share something like a "close companionship"; [23] there were even tales of this fish following ships which had captured "their" shark ...
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 ...
Cleaner fish play an essential role in the reduction of parasitism on marine animals. Some shark species participate in cleaning symbiosis, where cleaner fish remove ectoparasites from the body of the shark. A study by Raymond Keyes addresses the atypical behavior of a few shark species when exposed to cleaner fish.
Shark researcher Leonard Compagno comments on the relationship between the three species. "[The grey reef shark] ...shows microhabitat separation from the blacktip reef sharks; around islands where both species occur, the blacktip occupies shallow flats, while the grey reef shark is usually found in deeper areas, but where the blacktip is ...
As a juvenile, it sometimes acts as a cleaner fish on a reef station; its diet consists of small parasitic crustaceans such as copepods, isopods, and ostracods. [10] When attached to a host, the remora eats parasitic crustaceans, food scraps from its host's feeding activity, and even some small food captured by filtering water through its ...
Cleaning stations may be associated with coral reefs, located either on top of a coral head or in a slot between two outcroppings. Other cleaning stations may be located under large clumps of floating seaweed or at an accepted point in a river or lagoon. Cleaning stations are an exhibition of mutualism . Cleaner fish also obviously impact ...