The Secret Life of Cleaner Shrimp
Bennington College student Andrea Lara ’26 joins Brown University ecology research.
Over the summer of 2025, Bennington College student Andrea Lara ’26 was one of 60 students chosen from 50,000 applicants to study at Brown University. She was one of nine in the Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology cohort, and she was tasked with studying cleaner shrimp in the Caves Lab at Brown.
As a part of the job, she was responsible for daily shrimp care and feeding; checking the salinity, nitrogen, and ammonia levels in the water; and cleaning the tanks. And she watched research videos scientists had taken of fish and their interactions with the cleaner shrimp in the wild.
“I loved watching the fish videos,” she said. “It’s very relaxing and magical. It makes me feel like a mermaid, almost.”
Her goal was to verify information and make notations about species of fish who arrived at shrimp cleaning station locations in damselfish territory. See the video abstract she made about her work.
“We thought the damselfish and other species would have more of an effect [on the cleaning stations], and it turns out, not really.
"Sometimes science is like that. Even the small things that you find are still useful.”
“It’s crazy to think that something that I helped out with is now in Brown’s repository,” said Lara. “And I am very grateful for having had this opportunity.”