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The best known cleaning symbioses are among marine fishes, where several species of small fish, notably of wrasse, are specialised in colour, pattern and behaviour as cleaners, providing a cleaning and ectoparasite removal service to larger, often predatory fish.
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 called cheating.
Symbiosis L. amboinesis cleans the mouth of a moray eel. Lysmata amboinesis, like other cleaner shrimp, has a symbiotic relationship with 'client' fish in which both organisms benefit; the shrimp gain a meal from eating parasites living on large fish and the clients benefit from the removal of 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.
Cleaning symbiosis is well known among marine fish, where some small species of cleaner fish – notably wrasses, but also species in other genera – are specialized to feed almost exclusively by cleaning larger fish and other marine animals.
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.
The fish is endemic to Hawaii. These cleaner fish inhabit coral reefs, setting up a territory referred to as a cleaning station. They obtain a diet of small crustacean parasites by removing them from other reef fish in a cleaning symbiosis.
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 ...
Fish. Certain fish perform the task of cleaning other fish, by removing ectoparasites, cleaning wounded flesh, and getting rid of dead flesh. Even predatory fish rely on cleansing symbionts, and adopt a placid state while they are cleansed.
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]