Options
Bshary, Redouan
Nom
Bshary, Redouan
Affiliation principale
Fonction
Professeur ordinaire
Email
redouan.bshary@unine.ch
Identifiants
Résultat de la recherche
2 Résultats
Voici les éléments 1 - 2 sur 2
- PublicationAccès librePunishment and partner switching cause cooperative behaviour in a cleaning mutualism(2005)
; Grutter, Alexandra S.What are the mechanisms that prevent partners from cheating in potentially cooperative interactions between unrelated individuals? The cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus and client reef fish both benefit from an interaction as long as the cleaner eats ectoparasites. However, the cleaner fish prefers some client mucus, which constitutes cheating. Field observations suggested that clients control such cheating by using punishment (chasing the cleaner) or by switching partners (fleeing from the cleaner). Here, we tested experimentally whether such client behaviours result in cooperative cleaner fish. Cleaners were allowed to feed from Plexiglas plates containing prawn items and fish flake items. A lever attached to the plates allowed us to mimic the behaviours of clients. As cleaners showed a strong preference for prawn over flakes, we taught them that eating their preferred food would cause the plate to either chase them or to flee, while feeding on flakes had no negative consequences. We found a significant shift in cleaner fish foraging behaviour towards flake feeding after six learning trials. As punishment and terminating an interaction resulted in the cleaners feeding against their preferences in our experiment, we propose that the same behaviours in clients improve the service quality of cleaners under natural conditions. - PublicationAccès libreExperimental evidence that partner choice is a driving force in the payoff distribution among cooperators or mutualists : the cleaner fish case(2001)
; Grutter, Alexandra S.Supply and demand largely determine the price of goods on human markets. It has been proposed that in animals, similar forces influence the payoff distribution between trading partners in sexual selection, intraspecific cooperation and interspecific mutualism. Here we present the first experimental evidence supporting biological market theory in a study on cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus. Cleaners interact with two classes of clients: choosy client species with access to several cleaners usually do not queue for service and do not return if ignored, while resident client species with access to only one cleaning station do queue or return. We used plexiglas plates with equal amounts of food to simulate these behaviours of the two client classes. Cleaners soon inspected 'choosy' plates before 'resident' plates. This supports previous field observations that suggest that client species with access to several cleaners exert choice to receive better (immediate) service.