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Punishment and partner switching cause cooperative behaviour in a cleaning mutualism

Overview of attention for article published in Biology Letters, July 2005
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (88th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
2 news outlets
blogs
1 blog
twitter
1 X user
wikipedia
2 Wikipedia pages

Citations

dimensions_citation
195 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
324 Mendeley
citeulike
2 CiteULike
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Title
Punishment and partner switching cause cooperative behaviour in a cleaning mutualism
Published in
Biology Letters, July 2005
DOI 10.1098/rsbl.2005.0344
Pubmed ID
Authors

Redouan Bshary, Alexandra S Grutter

Abstract

What are the mechanisms that prevent partners from cheating in potentially cooperative interactions between unrelated individuals? The cleaner fish Labroides dimidiatus and client reef fish both benefit from an interaction as long as the cleaner eats ectoparasites. However, the cleaner fish prefers some client mucus, which constitutes cheating. Field observations suggested that clients control such cheating by using punishment (chasing the cleaner) or by switching partners (fleeing from the cleaner). Here, we tested experimentally whether such client behaviours result in cooperative cleaner fish. Cleaners were allowed to feed from Plexiglas plates containing prawn items and fish flake items. A lever attached to the plates allowed us to mimic the behaviours of clients. As cleaners showed a strong preference for prawn over flakes, we taught them that eating their preferred food would cause the plate to either chase them or to flee, while feeding on flakes had no negative consequences. We found a significant shift in cleaner fish foraging behaviour towards flake feeding after six learning trials. As punishment and terminating an interaction resulted in the cleaners feeding against their preferences in our experiment, we propose that the same behaviours in clients improve the service quality of cleaners under natural conditions.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 324 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 4 1%
Brazil 4 1%
United Kingdom 4 1%
Italy 2 <1%
Portugal 2 <1%
Switzerland 2 <1%
France 1 <1%
Hungary 1 <1%
Mexico 1 <1%
Other 5 2%
Unknown 298 92%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 66 20%
Student > Ph. D. Student 56 17%
Student > Master 55 17%
Researcher 44 14%
Student > Doctoral Student 17 5%
Other 44 14%
Unknown 42 13%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 183 56%
Environmental Science 26 8%
Psychology 17 5%
Social Sciences 10 3%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 8 2%
Other 27 8%
Unknown 53 16%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 31. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 17 September 2023.
All research outputs
#1,132,016
of 23,577,761 outputs
Outputs from Biology Letters
#1,044
of 3,275 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#1,413
of 57,872 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biology Letters
#4
of 36 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,577,761 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,275 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 55.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 68% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 57,872 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.