Abstract
Human-made noise is contributing increasingly to ocean soundscapes. Its physical, physiological and behavioural effects on marine organisms are potentially widespread, but our understanding remains largely limited to intraspecific impacts. Here, we examine how motorboats affect an interspecific cleaning mutualism critical for coral reef fish health, abundance and diversity. We conducted in situ observations of cleaning interactions between bluestreak cleaner wrasses (Labroides dimidiatus) and their fish clients before, during and after repeated, standardised approaches with motorboats. Cleaners inspected clients for longer and were significantly less cooperative during exposure to boat noise, and while motorboat disturbance appeared to have little effect on client behaviour, as evidenced by consistency of visit rates, clientele composition, and use of cleaning incitation signals, clients did not retaliate as expected (i.e., by chasing) in response to increased cheating by cleaners. Our results are consistent with the idea of cognitive impairments due to distraction by both parties. Alternatively, cleaners might be taking advantage of distracted clients to reduce their service quality. To more fully understand the importance of these findings for conservation and management, further studies should elucidate whether the efficacy of ectoparasite removal by cleaners is affected and explore the potential for habituation to boat noise in busy areas.
Highlights
Anthropogenic noise is contributing increasingly to soundscapes on a global scale
There are reasons to expect that cooperative interspecific interactions such as cleaning mutualisms could be affected by anthropogenic noise
We examined how the cleaning interactions of juvenile bluestreak cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus[33] are affected by short-term exposure to the noise of small outboard motorboats at Moorea Island
Summary
Anthropogenic (human-made) noise is contributing increasingly to soundscapes on a global scale. Exposure to human-made noise can result in poor decision-making, such as food handling errors (three-spined sticklebacks)[30], or decreased flight distance from potential predators (eels Anguilla anguilla)[10]. Taken together, these observations suggest that cooperative cleaning interactions, which rely heavily on cognition, memory and decision-making[31, 32], could potentially be impaired by noise. We examined how the cleaning interactions of juvenile bluestreak cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus (which, like adults of the species, provide cleaning services from small, permanent home ranges known as cleaning stations)[33] are affected by short-term exposure to the noise of small outboard motorboats at Moorea Island. The objectives of our main experiment were to compare, before, during and after exposure to motorboat noise: (1) the willingness of clients to seek the services of cleaner wrasses – as measured by consistency of clientele composition, visit rates and propensity to adopt incitation postures[35]; (2) the willingness of cleaner wrasses to engage in cleaning – as measured by inspection duration; and (3) overall cooperation – as measured by client jolts, which reflect cheating bites by cleaners[21], and retaliatory chases by their clients
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