Lionfish Undocumented Behavior by Jerry Ligon
The Creole Wrasse, Clepticus parrae, swim in to the reef where divers encounter them and it can be best described as a swarm swimming past us. They are deep-water plankton feeders, and, after feeding for a period of time, they forsake the depths and come toward the reef because they are now looking for cleaners. I expect to see this behavior on every dive, but was totally shocked to see this large number of Creole Wrasse come to the lionfish and begin to solicit cleaning.
This is what I call, “begging to be cleaned.”
The wrasse spot a potential cleaner, usually by the conspicuous yellow color or conspicuous white antennae, as in the case of a cleaner shrimp, tilt downward, stop swimming, open their mouths and fin their pectoral fins in a circular motion in order to remain in place in front of the possible cleaner. This behavior is thought to insure to the potential cleaner that the fish soliciting is not a hungry predator. When just one fish advertises to be cleaned, it is all that is needed for the others to notice what has been discovered and this calls for a mob of begging to take place by the entire school of up to several hundred.
This particular behavior with the lionfish was an undocumented observation. And the imminently whiter, “turkey-feather” pectorals appeared to be different than I had observed on other lionfish. This is the color cue that the Creole Wrasse are always aware of indicating a potential cleaner. This apparent ability of lionfish to be able to bring in fish wishing to solicit cleaning is a behavior that would favor those lionfish predators that were whiter colored on the pectoral fins.
I watched as 50-60 Creole Wrasse came in close to the white-colored pectoral fins, tilt downward and hover with mouth open briefly, then turn and leave. This process was repeated for the 10 to 15 minutes that I watched. The lionfish changed its orientation from facing the reef when I first saw this behavior, to facing the school of Creole Wrasse. The lionfish did not make any fast strike to catch one of the Creole Wrasse, but continued to move closer to the outside of the coral head to more open water. Most of the Creole Wrasse were in the 8 to 10 inch size range (perhaps a bit too large for lionfish prey) but there were several mid-sized wrasse in the 3 to 5 inch range that would have been small enough for potential prey for the lionfish that were also soliciting cleaning from the lionfish.
Jerry Ligon Photography 10 June, 2010
Administrators Note: This post is reproduced and used by permission from our good friend biologist Jerry Ligon who is a regular advisor to The Great Oceans Series.
Tags: lionfish, species behavior
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