|
Remora - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
||
|
|
||
|
This would fall into the commensalism symbiotic relationship, because the remora is getting its food, and the shark gets no benefit. ... Answers.com > Wiki Answers > Categories > Animal Life > Wild Animals > Fish > Saltwater Fish > Sharks > What is the symbiotic relationship between remoras and a shark?
|
||
|
If remoras could talk, they would calmly explain something called commensalism–a relationship where one species benefits from proximity to the other without harming or helping the other species. In this case, remoras benefit from riding on sharks without doing the sharks any harm.
|
||
|
But, (there's a conjunction that is beginning a sentence [that's relative to another list on this forum]) don't sharks benefit from the presence remoras? Don't remoras serve as a kind of vacuum cleaner for a shark's skin?
|
||
|
Remora or diskfish species of the family Echeneidae can be found on a wide variety of hosts including teleost fishes, marine mammals, turtles, sharks, and even conspecifics. This relationship is widely known, but the costs and benefits of this interaction for the remoras and their hosts remain poorly understood.
|
||
|
In the Yucatan caves, where large sharks go to bathe in fresh-water currents, remoras have been seen to eat the parasites that have been dislodged. In the Bimini lagoon, remoras dart in to eat the afterbirth debris following lemon shark births.
|
||
|
There are nine species of remoras. They can be found inshore as well as offshore. Remoras attaches to its hosts including sharks, rays, large fish, sea turtles, whales, dolphins and also to ships. Remoras feeds on small fishes, or scraps of fish that they eat when their host eats.
|
Copyright © 2009, Dictionary.com, LLC. All rights reserved.