gobies, which obtain most of their food via cleaning. Some obligate cleaners, such as L. bicolor and L. phthirophagus, mostly eat fish mucus and so are not considered as cooperative as the rest. But even the supposedly very cooperative ones, like L. dimidiatus, will eat mucus when they can get it. Most cleaner fish, however, are facultative cleaners which means they do not rely solely on cleani...

Collections of chigger mites from murid rodents were performed in two bordering provinces southwestern Saudi Arabia, Al Bahah and ‘Asir. A total 561 chiggers belonging to 19 species collected 2020 2021 54 species, Acomys dimidiatus (Cretzchmar) Mus musculus L. One new is described: Odontacarus thesigeri n. sp. Five are recorded Arabia for the first time: Microtrombicula abyssinica (Radford, 194...

Humans show great flexibility in adjusting their levels of cooperation to account for current and future circumstances. For example, levels of cooperation are higher if there is more competition at the level of the whole population than with interacting partners [1] and when individuals are likely to gain social prestige [2]. Humans also show the capacity to increase current levels of cooperati...

Hermaphroditism is ubiquitous among plants and widespread in the animal kingdom. It is an unsolved problem why reversed sex change has evolved in polygynous and protogynous reef fish. We have previously suggested that facultative monogamy occurs in low-density populations of polygynous species and that males that become single as a result of accidental mate loss may change sex when they meet la...

Coral reef mutualisms involve complex trophic ecological relationships that produce indirect effects. Excluding mutualistic cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus from reefs indirectly increases the abundance of many fishes and reduces demersal stages their ectoparasitic prey (gnathiid isopods). Whether cleaners affect populations planktivorous consume zooplankton, consequently rest zooplankton comm...

Recent empirical research, mostly done on humans, recognizes that individuals' physiological state affects levels of cooperation. An individual's internal state may affect the payoffs of behavioural alternatives, which in turn could influence the decision to either cooperate or to defect. However, little is known about the physiology underlying condition dependent cooperation. Here, we demonstr...

Cleaning behaviour is deemed a mutualism, however the benefit of cleaning interactions to client individuals is unknown. Furthermore, mechanisms that may shift fish community structure in the presence of cleaning organisms are unclear. Here we show that on patch reefs (61-285 m²) which had all cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus (Labridae) experimentally removed (1-5 adults reef⁻¹) and which we...

Accurate contextual decision-making strategies are important in social environments. Specific areas in the brain are tasked to process these complex interactions and generate correct follow-up responses. The dorsolateral and dorsomedial parts of the telencephalon in the teleost fish brain are neural substrates modulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine (DA), and are part of an important neural ...