The secret appetite of cleaner wrasses. (Fish).The little helpers known as cleaner fish, which nibble Half a byte (four bits). parasites off larger reef fish, actually prefer to nibble their clients. Earlier experiments had already caught cleaner fish apparently cheating, taking nips of flesh and skin-covering mucus from their customers, says Alexandra Grutter of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. However, she says, it wasn't dear whether the cleaner fish actually had a taste for their clients or were just hungry enough to nip the customer when the search for parasites proved arduous. Grutter and Redouan Bshary of Cambridge University Cambridge University, at Cambridge, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world. Originating in the early 12th cent. (legend places its origin even earlier than that of Oxford Univ.), Cambridge was organized into residential colleges, like those of Oxford, by the end of the 13th cent. CollegesThe 31 colleges presently associated with Cambridge, with their dates of founding, are Peterhouse, or St. in England administered a taste test. They trained the cleaner wrasses wrasse (răs), common name for a member of the large family Labridae, brilliantly colored fishes found among rocks and kelp in tropical seas. Wrasses, related to the parrotfishes, feed on mollusks and are equipped with shell-crushing teeth in both the mouth and throat. (Labroides dimidiatus) to eat off underwater trays and then offered an array of parasites and fish-mucus samples. The cleaners ate significantly more mucus than parasites, the researchers report. What's more, parrotfish parrotfish, common name for a member of the large family Scaridae, colorful reef fishes of warm seas, resembling the wrasses but of a larger size. Parrotfishes, also called pollyfishes, are so named for their powerful cutting-edged beaks, formed of fused incisorlike jaw teeth. With these they scrape from the surface of coral, algae, polyps, and other small plant and animal life upon which they feed. mucus proved more appealing than snapper snapper, name for members of the Lutianidae, a family of spiny-finned food and game fishes found chiefly in tropical coastal waters. Snappers are carnivorous, active, and voracious, with large mouths and sharp teeth. Most species travel in dense schools. Best known is the red snapper, an important food fish. It is abundant in the Gulf of Mexico and also frequents the Atlantic Coast north to Long Island. mucus. The taste test feeds the speculation that cleaning developed from opportunistic nipping at other fish, Grutter says. No wonder client fish periodically dart threateningly at their cleaners, she says.--S.M. |
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