Bryce Barbee: Exploring the Importance of Behavioral Variation Within a Marine Cleaning Mutualism

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Animals have individually-specific ways in which they act and this behavioral variation can affect important ecological relationships, such as mutualistic interactions.

Marine cleaning mutualisms are interactions in which shrimp remove parasites from larger ‘client’ fish species. In the cleaner shrimp, Ancylomenes pedersoni, small groups live together at cleaning stations and interact with a large variety of client reef fish species. Cleaning benefits the client via parasite removal and the cleaner via a meal, so a reasonable prediction is that cleaners should always provide clients with cleaning. However, the behaviors of individual cleaners vary during interactions: some cleaners in a group clean often, while others never do.

Here, we quantify behavioral differences between individual cleaners and investigate body size as a mechanism driving this variation. In our work, we have also explored behavioral differences between multiple sympatric cleaner species to understand if their ecological differences shape their behavioral phenotypes.