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 ...

Humans may help others even in situations where the recipient will not reciprocate [1-5]. In some cases, such behavior can be explained by the helpers increasing their image score, which will increase the probability that bystanders will help them in the future [5-7]. For other animals, the notion that many interactions take place in an environment containing an audience of eavesdropping bystan...

Coral reefs are one of the most diverse habitats in the world, yet our understanding of the processes affecting their biodiversity is limited. At the local scale, cleaner fish are thought to have a disproportionate effect, in relation to their abundance and size, on the activity of many other fish species, but confirmation of this species' effect on local fish diversity has proved elusive. The ...

Please cite this article in press as: Raihani, N dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.06.023 Inequity aversion (IA), a willingness to incur temporary costs to prevent unequal outcomes, is common in humans and thought to be beneficial in the context of cooperative relationships with nonkin, since it might allow individuals to regulate contributions to cooperative activities. Attempts to address whe...

Mimicry often involves a protective element, whereby the risk of predation on mimics is reduced owing to their resemblance to unpalatable models. However, protection from predation has so far seemed unimportant in aggressive mimicry, where mimics are usually predators rather than prey. Here, we demonstrate that bluestriped fangblennies (Plagiotremus rhinorhynchos), which are aggressive mimics o...

The genus Trypanidius Blanchard, 1846 includes 15 species in the Neotropical Region, nine of which occur in South America. In this contribution, the genus and South American species are redescribed and Trypanidius mimicavus sp. nov. is described from Bolivia. New distributional data are given for T. andicola Blanchard, 1846; T. dimidiatus Thomson, 1860; and T. notatus (Fabricius, 1787). All spe...

The abundance and species diversity of tabanids were evaluated by trapping of insects using Vavoua traps, during the rainy season, from October 4 to November 30, 2009, in three different habitats: primary forest, secondary forest and village, in the biosphere reserve Ipassa-IRET Makokou in Gabon. Eight species belonging to three genera of tabanids have been identified for a total of 402 specime...

One of the most notorious examples of cooperation between different species happens in the cleaner-client fish mutualism. The best known cleaner fish species, the bluestreak Indo-Pacific cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus has been a model system to study the evolution of cooperation between unrelated animals and between distinct species during the last couple of decades. Given that the cleaner...