Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasse

Common name for a species of coral reef-fish, with the scientific name Labroides dimidiatus. These fish are best-known for living in a cleaning symbiosis with larger –often predatory– fish (fig.). They groom those larger fish and benefit from this by feeding on any parasites, mucus and dead skin tissue, that they remove from them. They typically stay in locations, known as cleaning stations, where other fish come to be cleaned. Bluestreak Cleaner Wrasses inhabit coral rich areas of inner lagoons and subtidal reef flats, to seaward reefs. Adults are silvery-white, often with a yellow back and head, and a black lateral stripe along the length of the body, that becomes wider towards the tail, where the silvery-white has a bluish shine (fig.). These fish grow up to 14 centimetres in length and are known to show dance-like behaviour, in which they make movements with the tail, manoeuvring the back part of the body up and down, usually in order to greet an unfamiliar visitor to their cleaning station. 回