CLEANING BEHAVIOR RESEARCH

Principle Investigator:

Dr. Mary K. Wicksten
Professor of Biology
Texas A&M University
3258 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-3258
979-845-3388
wicksten@mail.bio.tamu.edu

Background:

Mary Wicksten received her A.B. and M.A. degrees in Biology from Humboldt State College and a Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Southern California. After postdoctoral work as a fellow of the Allen Hancock Foundation at the University of Southern California, she joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1980 and is now a Professor of Biology.

Research Focus:

Fish cleaning behavior in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary

Research Summary:

Cleaning is an activity that involves two partners: the cleaner, a small fish or shrimp that removes parasites, silt, injured skin or food remains from the other partner, and a larger fish termed a client.  This is a behavior that benefits both partners: the cleaner gets a meal, the client gets rid of something that irritates it.

Scientists debate on what should be called cleaning instead of a small fish or shrimp snatching a quick meal. Most agree that there is a sequence of activities involved. The client first arrives at a cleaning station--a coral head or sponge where the cleaner lives. Then it poses: it hovers vertically, rests on the bottom, opens its mouth, flares its fins or gills or changes color. The cleaner generally has bright colors: blue and white stripes if a goby, yellow and purple if a juvenile Spanish hogfish or white antennae if a cleaner shrimp. The cleaner touches the client with a fin or antenna. If the client is “OK,” then the cleaner gets busy picking at the nearest area of the client. More than one cleaner of more than one species can work on a client at once. Cleaning can last from seconds, as commonly occurs in small chromis fishes, or over an hour in a big grouper. When the client has “had enough,” it shakes the cleaner off and leaves.

Divers commonly also see cardinalfishes, banded coral shrimp, arrow crabs and other small animals living in a lair with a moray. They serve as barbers, dentists and garbage men for the moray, whose messy eating habits leave all sorts of tiny snacks for these little guys.  This is a beneficial relationship, but no posing or cleaner station is involved. This relationship goes by a different name--“den commensalism.”

In the eastern Pacific, hammerheads and other offshore fishes are cleaned at isolated seamounts. Similar fishes also travel to the Flower Garden Banks.  Mary was interested to find out if the Banks were a major cleaning area for fishes.

Years of observation and photography reveal that the usual clients are resident reef fishes, especially groupers, creolefishes and parrotfishes. The only offshore fishes that often visit cleaners are ocean triggerfishes. After mating battles, the beat-up fishes (the losers?) commonly head for the nearest juvenile Spanish hogfish, which snips off tattered skin.

But a desperate fish, even an unlikely client, will visit a cleaner. Mary has seen trunkfish, greater amberjacks and barracuda posing or resting for a cleaner. As a general rule, fishes that do not rest on or near the sea floor visit juvenile Spanish hogfishes, while those that can settle down visit gobies. Unlike in the Caribbean Sea, cleaner shrimp are rare at the Flower Garden Banks.

At Stetson Bank, something else may happen with loggerhead sea turtles. Twice, Mary has seen French angelfish picking algae from the backs of large turtles as they rest on the sea floor. She has also seen a juvenile French angelfish cleaning other fishes. Similar behavior has been seen in Hawaii, but with green sea turtles and tangs, not angelfishes, picking at them. 

Mary would appreciate any further photographs or notes on this behavior at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. She can be contacted at wicksten@mail.bio.tamu.edu.

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