Mobula kuhlii cleaning station identified at an inshore reef in southern Mozambique
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Animal Behavior, Ecology, Marine Biology
- Keywords
- Cleaning ecology, Habitat use, Behaviour, Mobula ray
- Copyright
- © 2016 Murie et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Mobula kuhlii cleaning station identified at an inshore reef in southern Mozambique. PeerJ PrePrints 4:e1724v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1724v1
Abstract
Cleaning interactions between the short fin devil ray, Mobula kuhlii, and the blue streaked cleaner wrasse, Labroides dimidiatus, were observed at two sites on a single reef in southern Mozambique. Cleaning interactions were filmed and described, with the number and location of interactions recorded and subsequently binned into six distinct body patches. Cleaners preferentially foraged within certain ray body patches, and this was found to vary between the two sites, possibly signifying that variations in a habitats composition can influence cleaning. Mobula kuhlii were not found to clean sympatrically with their close relatives in the Manta genus, implying their cleaning requires a distinct habitat or that niche partitioning is required to stem competition for host cleaner fishes attention. In total, 15 individuals were observed interacting with cleaners, and they never arrived alone, suggesting they may travel to cleaning areas in an aggregative manner.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.