SCUBA noise alters community structure and cooperation at Pederson’s cleaner shrimp cleaning stations

Recreational SCUBA diving is widespread and increasing on coral reefs worldwide. Standard open-circuit equipment inherently noisy and, by seeking out areas of high biodiversity, divers inadvertently expose reef communities to an intrusive source anthropogenic noise. Currently, little known about noise as acoustic stressor, there a general lack empirical evidence community-level impacts reefs. Here, we conducted playback experiment Caribbean investigate fish interspecific cooperation at ecologically important cleaning stations the Pederson’s cleaner shrimp Ancylomenes pedersoni . When exposed SCUBA-noise playback, total occurrence fishes decreased 7%, community clientele compositions were significantly altered, with 27% 25% monitored species being affected, respectively. Compared ambient-sound resulted in clients having wait 29% longer for initiation receiving 43% less cleaning; however, cheating, signalling, posing time spent not affected playback. Our study first demonstrate experimentally that can have least some negative organisms, confirming it relevant pollutant. Moreover, establishing disturbance likely mechanism diver presence animals, also identify potential avenue mitigation these valuable ecosystems.