New Clownfish Aggression research! What's your experience like? Share your opinion!

[Lennie]

Hey guys!

Hope you are doing well

Today, on my IG feed, I came across a recent research about clownfish and wanted to share it here and maybe hear about your experiences and opinions about it. I didn't notice if anyone shared it before me. But I think this topic can be a great one to share some thoughts and experiences while talking about the research.


The research is about Amphiprion ocellaris. Here are the related links below:
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb...fish-count-stripes-to-distinguish-friend-from
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb...-Amphiprion-ocellaris?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The 28 described species have between 0 and 3 white bars present, which has been suggested to be important for species recognition. In the present study, we found that Amphiprion ocellaris (a species that displays three white bars) hatched and reared in aquaria, when faced with an intruder fish, attacked their own species more frequently than other species of intruding anemonefish. Additionally, we explicitly tested whether this species could distinguish models with different numbers of bars. For this, 120 individuals of A. ocellaris were presented with four different models (no bars, and 1, 2 and 3 bars) and we compared whether the frequency of aggressive behavior towards the model differed according to the number of bars. The frequency of aggressive behavior toward the 3-bar model was the same as against living A. ocellaris, and was higher than towards any of the other models. We conclude that A. ocellaris use the number of white bars as a cue to identify and attack only competitors that might use the same host. We considered this as an important behavior for efficient host defense."

The article:
https://www.oist.jp/news-center/new...ish-seem-be-counting-bars-and-laying-down-law

To find out, Hayashi, Noah Locke and Vincent Laudet (both from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology) raised a school of young Nemos, the common clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris), from eggs, to ensure that the fish had never set eyes on other species of anemonefish. Once the youngsters were ∼6 months old, Hayashi filmed their reactions to other anemonefish species – including Clarke's anemonefish (A. clarkii), orange skunk clownfish (A. sandaracinos) and saddleback clownfish (A. polymnus) – as well as intruders of their own species, to find out how they responded. Sure enough, the common clownfish gave members of their own species, with three white bands, the hardest time, facing off against 80% of the fish for up to 3 s and even maintaining an 11 s standoff with one fish. In contrast, the intruders of other species had an easier time: the orange skunk clownfish – with no side bars and a white line along its back – got off the lightest and were barely confronted, while the Clarke's clown fish and saddleback clownfish – with two and three white bars, respectively – were mildly bullied. ‘Common clownfish… attacked their own species most frequently’, says Hayashi.

This brought some questions to my mind.
1) What is your experience like in terms of aggression of A.Ocellaris towards other clowns and their own kind, and have you ever noticed a relationship between the aggression and number of bars?

2) Many A. Ocellaris today have color variations of naked, blacks, storms, multicolors, and many more. If they take bars as a sign of hierarchy in their social group dynamic, and relate the bars with aggression, how do these color forms work?
Do they mess up with the fishes' way of communicating with its colors? Do they lessen the aggression or resulting in worse combinations? Like would a normal colored A.Ocellaris would be more peaceful versus a naked color variation due to lack of bars?

3) If you kept more than color variations as a group or try to pair two from different color variants, Have you ever noticed problems such as the look affecting the group dynamic/pairing of the fish given that they find the look important in their social dynamics?


Would love to hear your experience and opinion!

 

[coralboi56]

Like the second question, my problem would be when it comes to designer clownfish. If someone wanted to disprove the study, that's all they would have to do. Get a bunch of different designer clownfish and record their reaction.

Also, tangs will do the same thing. Zebrasoma tangs will attack anoter zebrasoma tang if it looks enough like it. How do they distinguish friend from foe?

Obviously, fish clearly have SOME form of self awareness. That's the definitive takeaway from the study

 

[Lennie]

Like the second question, my problem would be when it comes to designer clownfish. If someone wanted to disprove the study, that's all they would have to do. Get a bunch of different designer clownfish and record their reaction.

Also, tangs will do the same thing. Zebrasoma tangs will attack anoter zebrasoma tang if it looks enough like it. How do they distinguish friend from foe?

Obviously, fish clearly have SOME form of self awareness. That's the definitive takeaway from the study

Yea, I am new to saltwater world, but I can easily tell many fish have a language that involves their look and color, like the way cichlids speak to each other, at least in the freshwater world. One of the biggest reasons why they are not suggested to keep cichlids from different parts of the world, as they all have their unique ways to understand each other based on their color changes, look, etc. and besides all other differences, they may interpret their signs in the opposite way. One regions signs of showing aggression may look like another’s subdominant look, which leads to unnecessary fights and more

Probably there are numerous people who had a chance to try different color forms and observe the behavior of clownfish versus different color variations or other clownfish species

I am interested in keeping some in the future as my tank is cycling currently, So I wanna read and learn as much as I can.

Btw, even though the character has an effect, generally speaking, some color forms in freshwater tend to be more aggressive compared to their wild colored friends. Like a wild apistogramma cacatuoides is usually less aggressive than triple red ones. Or black german blue rams are usually more aggressive than normal wild forms.

I wonder if the designer colors have any effects on agression too, besides this research based on fish bars. Like blacks or naked being more agressive for example?