Fish cleaning interactions on a remote island in the Tropical Eastern Pacific

Abstract

Cleaning interactions are an essential feature of marine ecosystems since they help maintain a healthy community. However, knowledge on the magnitude of the cleaning interactions in the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) is scarce, especially in remote places like oceanic islands. Here, we describe for the first time the cleaning interactions among reef fishes at Malpelo Island, a World Heritage site located in the TEP. In 120 cleaning events at Malpelo, we have observed five fish species acting as cleaners and nineteen acting as clients. We observed one local endemic and four regional endemic species of the TEP among the cleaners, and five elasmobranchs and fourteen ray-finned species as clients. Our results show that Johnrandallia nigrirostris was the cleaner with the largest number of events and client species, whereas Lepidonectes bimaculatus was the most specific cleaner (i.e. it has only one client species). We observed that 56 % of the cleaning interactions involved a top predator as client. Our results suggest that the role of cleaner is executed by just few fish species at Malpelo Island, and that a high number of cleaning interactions occur with top predators (groupers, snappers, sharks, and rays), which could be an indication of the good conservation status of Malpelo.