Narvaez Pauline, Furtado Miguel, Soares Marta C
CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, Universidade do Porto, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Campus de Vairão, Universidade do Porto, Vairão, Portugal.
BIOPOLIS Program in Genomics, Biodiversity and Land Planning, CIBIO, Vairão, Portugal.
J Fish Biol. 2024 Dec;105(6):1724-1730. doi: 10.1111/jfb.15915. Epub 2024 Aug 28.
Cleaner fishes remove parasites from other fishes called "clients," thereby contributing to a healthier ecosystem. Although the behavior and learning abilities of dedicated and tropical cleaner fishes have been broadly studied, a limited number of studies investigated the behavior of facultative and temperate cleaner fishes and, to the best of our knowledge, none focused on their cognitive abilities. Here, we tested the learning abilities of a species of temperate facultative cleaner, the ornate wrasse Thalassoma pavo in laboratory conditions, based on two problems. These two problems, or tasks, are relevant in two different contexts: the first one, deemed as mutualistically relevant, the cue-based discrimination task, and the second one, the spatial-based discrimination task, which is relevant in a non-cleaning context, when fish navigate through their environment to find food and return to their territories. We found that T. pavo individuals were able to solve these two tasks but excelled at the spatial task rather than with the cue discrimination. The same individuals were also challenged to learn the reverse protocol of these tasks and were again most successful in learning the reverse spatial discrimination problem, but not the cue. Contrary to the dedicated cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus, this temperate facultative cleaner wrasse is slower to learn mutualistic relevant problems but competent in solving spatially derived problems. This may be due to the specific demands of their socio-ecological environment, with facultative cleaners having a greater component of non-mutualistic skills (spatial component), which prepares them to search for alternative food sources if necessary (e.g., feeding on the substrate) or even to expand territories more easily and less prepared to deal with mutualistic exchanges compared to dedicated cleaners that specialize to become increasingly socially competent.
清洁鱼会从被称为“客户”的其他鱼类身上清除寄生虫，从而促进生态系统更加健康。尽管专门的热带清洁鱼的行为和学习能力已得到广泛研究，但对兼性和温带清洁鱼行为的研究较少，据我们所知，尚无研究关注它们的认知能力。在此，我们在实验室条件下，基于两个问题测试了一种温带兼性清洁鱼——孔雀濑鱼（Thalassoma pavo）的学习能力。这两个问题或任务在两种不同情境下具有相关性：第一个被视为互利相关的基于线索的辨别任务，第二个是基于空间的辨别任务，在非清洁情境中具有相关性，即当鱼类在其环境中导航寻找食物并返回其领地时。我们发现孔雀濑鱼个体能够解决这两个任务，但在空间任务上表现出色，而非线索辨别任务。同样的个体还被要求学习这些任务的反向流程，并且在学习反向空间辨别问题时再次最为成功，但在线索任务上则不然。与专门的清洁濑鱼裂唇鱼（Labroides dimidiatus）不同，这种温带兼性清洁濑鱼学习互利相关问题的速度较慢，但有能力解决基于空间的问题。这可能是由于它们的社会生态环境的特定需求，兼性清洁鱼具有更大比例的非互利技能（空间成分），这使它们在必要时能够寻找替代食物来源（例如以底物为食），甚至更易于扩张领地，并且与专门变得越来越具有社交能力的专门清洁鱼相比，它们不太准备好应对互利交换。
