[video]www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4kZAgny5eg[/video]
For the first time, scientists have recorded an incidence of unexpected association between the mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) and the black-marble jawfish (Stalix cf. histrio) in the waters of the Lembeh Strait, Indonesia.
The mimic octopus is well known for it creative shifts in its movements, shape, and color to impersonate poisonous flatfish, lionfish, and even sea snakes to avoid predators while swimming freely.
The tiny black-marble jawfish, a shy and timid swimmer, usually stays close to its burrows in the sandy sea bottoms and quickly draws back in case of threat from predators.
During his diving trip in the Lembeh Strait, Godehard Kopp, a researcher at the University of Gottingen in Germany, filmed a black-marble jawfish swimming close to the arms of a mimic octopus. The color patterns of the fish perfectly matched the octopus’s markings, camouflaging the fish among the octopus’s eight long arms.
The fish species was identified by two biologists, Rich Ross and Luiz Rocha, at the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) in San Francisco.
“This is a unique case in the reefs not only because the model for the jawfish is a mimic itself, but also because this is the first case of a jawfish involved in mimicry,” said Rocha in a press release.
Researchers described the association as an “opportunistic” rather than “obligate” form of mimicry, as the black-marble jawfish is mostly distributed from Japan to Australia, whereas the mimic octopus inhabits the Indo-Malay region.
“In our case, we think the Black-Marble Jawfish takes advantage of the presence of the Mimic Octopus in certain areas and follows it presumably to forage away from its shelter,” researchers wrote in their paper.
“Unfortunately, reefs in the Coral Triangle area of Southeast Asia are rapidly declining mostly due to harmful human activities, and we may lose species involved in unique interactions like this even before we get to know them,” Rocha said in the press release.
The findings were published in the journal Coral Reefs.
