CORAL GROUPER (Cephalopholis miniata) with CLEANER SHRIMP ©Jason Isley
Coral Grouper Are beautiful reef fish - bright red and covered in blue spots. They form harems comprising a single male and between 2 and 12 females.
- they can reach 45 cm in length
- they have big mouths and sharp canine teeth
- they are territorial defending a 400 sq km area
- they are distributed throughout the Indo-Pacific
- they feed on other fish and crustaceans
Cleaner shrimp is a generic term for any swimming decapod crustacean that cleans other organisms of parasites. This is a widely-cited example of symbiosis: a relationship in which both parties benefit. The fish benefit by having parasites removed from them, and the shrimp gain the nutritional value of the parasites. In many coral reefs, cleaner shrimp congregate at cleaning stations.
In this behaviour cleaner shrimps resemble cleaner fish, and sometimes actually may be seen to join cleaner wrasse and other cleaner fish attending to client fishes.
Cleaner shrimp may belong to any of three families, Palaemonidae (including the spotted cleaner shrimp, Periclimenes yucatanicus and Periclimenes magnificus), Hippolytidae (including the Pacific cleaner shrimp, Lysmata amboinensis) and Stenopodidae (including the banded coral shrimp, Stenopus hispidus). The last of these families is more closely related to lobsters and crabs than it is to the remaining families. The term “cleaner shrimp” is sometimes used more specifically for the family Hippolytidae and the genus Lysmata.
Fact Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleaner_shrimp
Other photos you may enjoy:
