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Dec 26 2012 - 10:59am
These candy cane snapping shrimp (Alpheus randalli) have a pretty nice set up. They share their living space with goby fish, helping the fish dig and maintain the burrow that they share in the seafloor. In turn the small, and mostly blind, shrimp (seen in this photo below the goby) get protection...
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Nov 8 2011 - 2:24pm
“It is strange to think of a sea turtle as an ecosystem,” says Amanda Feuerstein, program coordinator and research assistant at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, “but they are…they have all of these other animals living on their skin and shells.”
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Nov 8 2011 - 3:48pm
In a 2011 study published in the Bulletin of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, researchers documented a number of different organisms living on olive ridley and green turtles in the Pacific. Of these "epibionts," crustaceans made up more than 40% of those observed. Some are depicted here:...
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Nov 9 2012 - 4:44pm
One of the first signs of a sick coral reef is seaweed creeping across the corals, stealing their precious sunny real estate. Healthy corals, however, aren't completely hopeless: in some reefs, small fishes, such as this broad-barred goby (Gobiodon histrio), help eat the seaweeds away....
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Jan 8 2013 - 10:21am
The toothy goby or common ghost goby (Pleurosicya mossambica) lives among soft corals and sponges in the Indo-Pacific ocean. The relationship it has with its host is commensal, which means the goby benefits from the protection and habitat in the corals, but the coral doesn't get hurt or benefit...
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Jan 26 2010 - 11:45am
This close-up photo of a right whale's head shows dozens of hitchhikers—tiny crustaceans known as whale lice, or cyamid amphipods. They live on the rough patches of skin (known as callosities) on North Atlantic right whales, eating algae that settles there and only causing minor skin damage....
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Nov 8 2011 - 4:34pm
Amanda Feuerstein with a nesting olive ridley (Lepidochelys olivacea). Feuerstein is a co-author of a study that surveyed algae, crustaceans, mollusks, and other epibionts that live on olive ridley and green sea turtles in the Pacific Ocean. You can read about the study on the Ocean Portal blog.
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Jul 9 2012 - 9:33am
Two bright orange anemonefish (Amphiprion ocellaris) poke their heads between anemone tentacles. Anemonefish are able to swim amongst the stinging tentacles without getting stung -- but no one knows exactly sure how. One dominant theory explains that they have a protective slime coating their...
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