Unlike the stars of Disney’s Finding Nemo, real-life clownfish aren’t keen on sharing homes with their own kind.
Researchers say they have discovered a way to weed out unwelcome guests by counting vertical white markings on strangers.
according to Previous researchSea anemones that house clownfish can also serve as temporary homes for other species if they have horizontal stripes or no stripes at all.
However, experiments have shown that common clownfish do not tend to coexist with fish that have vertical markings like themselves, and are instead more aggressive towards model fish with such markings. Shown.
Scientists have now discovered that it’s not just the presence of vertical stripes, but their number, that helps clownfish recognize their mates.
Dr. Kina Hayashi from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, lead author of the study, said: “Perhaps there are other factors other than the white vertical lines that are important in distinguishing between species.
“But this experiment at least suggested that the number of white vertical lines is important in identifying the same species and deciding whether to attack.”
Japanese researchers describe in the Journal of Experimental Biology how they placed young clownfish, which had never seen any other species, in a small transparent case inside an aquarium. The case contained either the same species of fish, which has an orange body with three vertical white stripes, or a different species of clownfish, which has different markings.
The researchers found that clownfish exhibited more aggressive behavior toward members of their own species, and more frequently, than the orange clownfish, which only has a single white horizontal stripe on its back. However, he did not find any significant differences in behavior towards other species of clownfish that have one or more vertical stripes.
The researchers then exposed common clownfish to model fish that were painted orange and had either one, two, or three vertical white stripes.
Scientists found that the frequency of aggressive behavior toward models by these groups was much lower when they were painted without stripes compared to striped models.
However, based on individual behavior, the researchers found that fish were more aggressive toward models with three vertical stripes than one.
Professor Hayashi said the results were interesting because the ecological role of the white stripes on the clownfish (also known as the clownfish) was not previously clear.
“This result is supportive.”[s] “The idea is that clownfish can distinguish between different numbers of white bars, and that differences in the number of white bars help clownfish distinguish between their species,” she said.
