On the surface, cleaner wrasses seem like real nice fish. They set up their little cleaning stations on patches of reef, offering to eat any external parasites that other fish might have picked up. It’s a pretty sweet deal for both sides — the cleaners get a tasty meal, while the other fish get rid of pests. But not all of these do-gooders deserve their squeaky clean reputation. Every once in a while, a cleaner wrasse will take advantage of the situation and take a bite out of the tasty mucus coating of its client instead of eating parasites like it’s supposed to. This cheating behavior has fascinated scientists, who want to uncover what drives the cleaners to cheat, and what keeps them in line.
“They are a very good system to study cooperation between unrelated individuals,” explains Simon Gingins, who is studying the cooperation between cleaners and their clients for his PhD. Cleaner fish are dependent on their clients to eat, as they’re not fast enough to take bites out of fish that don’t sit and wait. “Their cooperative behavior is central to their life: most of what they do everyday is to interact with other fish species to obtain their food.”
Continue reading “Cheater Cheater Mucus Eater: Simple Mechanisms Drive Cleaner Wrasses To Cooperate”
