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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).
Cleaning symbiosis is an 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). It is putatively mutually beneficial, but biologists have long debated whether it is mutual selfishness, or simply exploitative.
The red-billed oxpecker eats ticks on the impala's coat, in a cleaning symbiosis. Service-resource relationships are common. Three important types are pollination, cleaning symbiosis, and zoochory. In pollination, a plant trades food resources in the form of nectar or pollen for the service of pollen dispersal.
This example of cleaning symbiosis represents mutualism and cooperation behaviour, an ecological interaction that benefits both parties involved. However, the cleaner fish may consume mucus or tissue, thus creating a form of parasitism [4] called cheating .
Cleaner shrimp are so called because they exhibit a cleaning symbiosis with client fish where the shrimp clean parasites from the fish. The fish benefit by having parasites removed from them, and the shrimp gain the nutritional value of the parasites.
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. [6]
Formerly placed in the pratincole and courser family, Glareolidae, it is now regarded as the sole member of its own monotypic family Pluvianidae. The species is one of several plovers doubtfully associated with the "trochilus" bird mentioned in a supposed cleaning symbiosis with the Nile crocodile .
Cleaner wrasse. Cleaner wrasses, Labroides sp., working on gill area of dragon wrasse Novaculichthys taeniourus, on a reef in Hawaii. 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.
Hosts of many species are involved in cleaning symbiosis, both in the sea and on land, making use of smaller animals to clean them of parasites. Cleaners include fish, shrimps and birds; hosts or clients include a much wider range of fish, marine reptiles including turtles and iguanas, octopus, whales, and terrestrial mammals. [4]
Cleaning symbiosis is within the scope of WikiProject Animals, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to animals and zoology. For more information, visit the project page . Animals Wikipedia:WikiProject Animals Template:WikiProject Animals animal articles