Does Competition for Clients Increase Service Quality in Cleaning Gobies?

Abstract

In a biological market, members of one trading class try to outbid each other to gain access to the most valuable partners. Competition within class can thus force individuals to trade goods or services more cheaply, ultimately resulting in conflict (e.g. cheating) over the value of commodities. Cleaning symbioses among fish appear to be good examples of biological markets. However, the existence and effect of outbidding competition among either types of traders (cleaners or clients) have never been tested. We examined whether increasing competition among cleaning gobies (Elacatinus spp.) for access to clients results in outbidding in the form of provision of a better cleaning service. On reefs where fish clients visited cleaning stations less frequently, and thus competition among cleaners was higher, cleaning gobies ingested fewer scales relative to the number of ingested parasites, i.e. they cleaned more honestly. This shift in cleaner behaviour towards greater honesty is consistent with a greater market value of access to clients in the face of competition among cleaners. However, this pattern could have also arisen as a result of differences in ectoparasite availability across reefs and therefore in value of the commodity offered by clients. Experimental manipulations will be required to determine whether cleaning service quality by cleaning gobies was enhanced solely because of competitive outbidding.

Cooperation for direct fitness benefits

“…For instance, 'local' clients for which long-distance moves are costly are cleaned less well than long-range travellers, who can easily switch between cleaning stations and thereby exert partner choice (Bshary & Noë 2003), which is exactly what one would expect from the economic theory of monopolistic competition: buyers with few alternative sources of supply will have less advantageous transactions than those who can shop around (Bowles & Hammerstein 2003). There are also data to suggest that cleaner service quality becomes better when clients are more scarce (Soares et al 2008). Similarly, in the social behaviour of vervet monkeys, scarce food providers were found to receive more grooming (Fruteau et al 2009).…”

Cleaner fishes and shrimp diversity and a re‐evaluation of cleaning symbioses

“…Cleaners have been reported to remove and ingest client fish mucus and scales in addition to their ectoparasites; clients have been reported to eat their cleaners. Both are classic examples of cheating in a cleaning symbiosis (Arnal, Côté, & Morand, ; Cheney & Côté, ; Feder, ; Francini‐Filho, Moura, & Sazima, ; Gorlick, ; Grutter, ; Grutter & Bshary, ; Hobson, ; Limbaugh et al ., ; Oates, Manica, & Bshary, ; Randall, ; Soares, Bshary, Cardoso, & Côté, ). Cheating is a temporary disturbance in the symbiotic relationship (Bshary & Würth, ), not isolated to cleaning symbiosis, but is common in many mutualisms, and results when one partner provides less commodity for their benefit received (Ferreire, Bronstein, Rinaldi, Law, & Gauduchon, ).…”

Temporal patterns of Pederson shrimp (Ancylomenes pedersoni Chace 1958) cleaning interactions on Caribbean coral reefs

“…These gobies occupy discreet microhabitats (e.g., coral heads and sponges) that serve as cleaning stations and provide daily cleaning services to dozens of species (Johnson and Ruben 1988;Arnal et al , 2001Whiteman and Côté 2002;Côté and Molloy 2003;Soares et al 2007;Côté and Soares 2011). The primary ectoparasite targets of these gobies are gnathiid isopod crustaceans that temporarily attach to client fish Arnal et al 2001;Soares et al 2008aSoares et al , 2010. Gnathiids emerge from the benthos at night to feed on the bodily fluids of host fish (Grutter 1999b;Grutter and Hendrikz 1999;Grutter et al 2000;Sikkel et al 2006).…”