Damselfish farm shrimp

[Kat_Rigel]

Apparently the Google algorithm has really honed in on my interests, because I found yet another interesting article. It's saltwater, but I think symbiotic relationships are fascinating; and this article says the fish have domesticated the shrimp, which is a pretty strong descriptor. I do read this with a grain of salt though; it's basically written by a research team that hasn't actually published/peer reviewed the results yet, but interesting nonetheless.

We found algae-farming fish that domesticate tiny shrimp to help run their farms

THECONVERSATION.COM

Tl,dr; damselfish keep little farms of mysis shrimp so the shrimp poop fertilizes the damselfish's algae farm. (Damselfish eat the algae.)

[FrozenFins]

saltwater is so cool because of how many fish have different symbolic relationships. I think the most intersting is the watchman goby and pistolshrimp. The goby will swim next to the pistol shrimp and look out for danger, once he sees danger they will both run back to the pistol shrimps cave/ burrow. super intersting.