311: Cleaner Wrasse

Full Episode description

Ellen comes clean about the bluestreak cleaner wrasse. We discuss trust, cheating, fish patriarchy, manipulation, deception, game theory, the prisoner’s dilemma, marketing, the mirror test, the horrors of self-awareness, and so much more. Christian drinks a Capri-Sun. 

Works Cited:

1. “Testing the Low-density Hypothesis for Reversed Sex Change in Polygynous Fish: Experiments in Labroides dimidiatus” – Tetsuo Kuwamura et al., Scientific Reports, March 2014
2. “Punishment and partner switching cause cooperative behavior in a cleaning mutualism” – Redouan Bshary & Alexandra Grutter, Biology Letters, July 2005
3. “Power and temptation cause shifts between exploitation and cooperation in a cleaner wrasse mutualism” – Simon Gingins et al., Proc. Biol. Sci., June 2013
4. “Male cleaner wrasses adjust punishment of female partners according to the stakes” by Nichola J Raihani et al., Proc. Biol. Sci., June 2011
5. “Cleaner fish are sensitive to what their partners can and cannot see” – Katherine McAuliffe et al., Communications Biology, Sep 2021
6. “Biting cleaner fish use altruism to deceive image-scoring client reef fish” by Redouan Bshary et al., Proc. Biol. Sci., Feb 2002
7. “If a fish can pass the mark test, what are the implications for consciousness and selfawareness testing in animals?” – Masanori Kohda et al., PLOS Biol, Feb 2019
8. “Further evidence for the capacity of mirror self-recognition in cleaner fish and the significance of ecologically relevant marks” – Masanori Kohda et al., PLOS Biol., Feb 2022
9. “Cleaner fish recognize self in a mirror via self-face recognition like humans” – Masanori Kohda et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 2023
10. “Cleaner fish with mirror self-recognition capacity precisely realize their body size based on their mental image” – Taiga Kobayashi et al., Scientific Reports, Sep 2024
11. “The false cleanerfish relies on aggressive mimicry to bite fish fins when benthic foods are scarce in their local habitat” – Misaki Fujisawa et al., Scientific Reports, May 2020

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