Asymmetric cheating opportunities and partner control in a cleaner fish mutualism

Bshary, Redouan; Grutter, Alexandra S.

doi:10.1006/anbe.2001.1937

Cited by 238 publications

(273 citation statements)

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“…Clients can decide on the duration of the interaction. In the cleaning mutualism, clients terminate interactions in response to cheating with about a 50% probability 19 . In the model, we assumed that clients have a 50% probability of terminating the interaction in response to an exploit.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…We observed male-female pairs of cleaner fish in the field using standard interaction protocols (see Methods). We distinguished three situations-females inspecting alone, males inspecting alone, and pair inspection-and we compared client jolt rates (a response to cheating cleaners 19 ) between the three situations. In the pair situation, we also distinguished between jolts caused by females and by males.…”

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Pairs of cooperating cleaner fish provide better service quality than singletons

Bshary

Grutter

Willener

et al. 2008

Nature

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112

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Service providers may vary service quality depending on whether they work alone or provide the service simultaneously with a partner. The latter case resembles a prisoner's dilemma [1][2][3][4] , in which one provider may try to reap the benefits of the interaction without providing the service. Here we present a game-theory model based on the marginal value theorem 5 , which predicts that as long as the client determines the duration, and the providers cooperate towards mutual gain, service quality will increase in the pair situation. This prediction is consistent with field observations and with an experiment on cleaning mutualism, in which stable male-female pairs of the cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus repeatedly inspect client fish jointly. Cleaners cooperate by eating ectoparasites 6 off clients but actually prefer to cheat and eat client mucus 7 . Because clients often leave in response to such cheating, the benefits of cheating can be gained by only one cleaner during a pair inspection. In both data sets, the increased service quality during pair inspection was mainly due to the smaller females behaving significantly more cooperatively than their larger male partners. In contrast, during solitary inspections, cleaning behaviour was very similar between the sexes. Our study highlights the importance of incorporating interactions between service providers to make more quantitative predictions about cooperation between species.Many cooperative interactions can be seen as an exchange of goods, services or commodities between two classes of traders [8][9][10] . Here we investigated traders that provide a service to a second class of traders, such as an ant partner species-for example, lycaenid butterfly larvae-providing a sugary solution to ants 11 , rhizobial bacteria fixing nitrogen for leguminous plants 12 or cleaner fish removing ectoparasites from client reef fish 13 . We have used the last example as our model system. Cleaners prefer the mucus of some client species more than gnathiid isopods 7 , the most commonly found ectoparasites of reef fishes 14 . Clients use various actions to make cleaners forage against their preference 15,16 , the simplest form of control being to terminate the interaction by swimming off in response to a cheating bite 17 . Adult cleaners often live in pairs of a male and the largest female in his harem 18 and they commonly inspect larger clients simultaneously. Pair inspections result in cleaners facing a problem: a visiting client may leave after a cheat, even though only one cleaner was responsible for the cheating whereas the second cleaner cooperated. Hence, the cooperative cleaner loses a foraging opportunity owing to its partner's action, whereas the cheating cleaner gains a bite of mucus. We explored both mathematically and empirically how these pay-off asymmetries influence the service quality provided in paired compared with solitary inspections.We explored a game in which one class of individuals provides a service (cleaners remove ectoparasites) to a second clas...

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Pairs of cooperating cleaner fish provide better service quality than singletons

Bshary

Grutter

Willener

et al. 2008

Nature

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112

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“…Another abundant type of ectoparasite, monogenean flatworms, was eaten with similar probability relative to mucus [41]. Furthermore, client control over duration of interactions appears to be very high [42]. Thus, the conditions favouring a mutualistic outcome, even in the absence of additional control mechanisms, seem to be fulfilled.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Unlike punishment, it does not rely on future benefits arising from the increase in cooperative behaviour of the target to be under positive selection [11]. Our results add further evidence to the growing perception that while more complex mechanisms such as punishment or reputational effects may receive more attention from researchers, rather simple partner control mechanisms like sanctions may often be responsible for stable cooperation in natural examples [2-4,35,49]: a plant's selective abortion of fruits infested with seed-eating larvae of the pollinator species [51], a plant's selectively reduced investment in root growth in areas in which nitrogen fixation by rhizobia bacteria is low [30,31], reduced probing duration by a pollinator if nectar quantities are low [52,53], the avoidance of a cleaner wrasse that has been observed cheating another client [27] or the premature departure of a client in response to cleaner cheating [42].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lacking the option to reciprocate, clients face the challenge of inducing cleaners to feed against their preference, in order to obtain a good cleaning service. A frequent observation in the field is that clients terminate cleaning interactions earlier in response to cheating by a cleaner [42]. We conducted a laboratory experiment to explore whether the clients' threat of early departure might suffice to suppress net exploitation by the partner, as suggested by the model described earlier [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

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Power and temptation cause shifts between exploitation and cooperation in a cleaner wrasse mutualism

et al. 2013

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In many instances of cooperation, only one individual has both the potential and the incentive to 'cheat' and exploit its partner. Under these asymmetric conditions, a simple model predicts that variation in the temptation to cheat and in the potential victim's capacity for partner control leads to shifts between exploitation and cooperation. Here, we show that the threat of early termination of an interaction was sufficient to induce cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus to feed selectively against their preference (which corresponds to cooperatively eating client fish ectoparasites), provided that their preference for alternative food was weak. Under opposite conditions, cleaners fed selectively according to their own preference (which corresponds to cheating by eating client mucus). By contrast, a non-cleaning fish species, Halichoeres melanurus, failed to adjust its foraging behaviour under these same conditions. Thus, cleaners appear to have evolved the power to strategically adjust their levels of cooperation according to the circumstances.

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Cooperation and Cognition in Fishes

and¹,

Dugatkin²

2006

Fish Cognition and Behavior

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Asymmetric cheating opportunities and partner control in a cleaner fish mutualism

Cited by 238 publications

References 26 publications

Pairs of cooperating cleaner fish provide better service quality than singletons

Pairs of cooperating cleaner fish provide better service quality than singletons

Power and temptation cause shifts between exploitation and cooperation in a cleaner wrasse mutualism

Cooperation and Cognition in Fishes

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