Clownfish Can Find Their Way Back to Their Reef Using Sense of Smell
This article was originally published in Aquarium Fish International, February 2009: page 18
After clownfish hatch from their eggs, they spend about 10-12 days floating freely in the ocean, as pelagic larvae. After that time, they often return to the reefs close to shore, where they were born. The mechanism through which the fish find their way back home has long been a mystery to scientists. Researchers studying the percula clownfish, Amphiprion percula, have recently found that the clownfish may be attracted to smells in the seawater. In the waters off New Guinea, percula clownfish inhabit shallow water reefs under the canopy of the New Guinea rainforest. In a study published by the Royal Society B, scientists showed that clownfish were preferentially attracted to water samples treated with anemones or leaf litter over control water samples—suggesting that ‘scent’, or other chemical markers are what allow clownfish to find their way home, after undergoing metamorphisis at sea. While olfactor sensation (sense of smell) has been an acceptable theory of how migratory fish find their way home, terrestrial causes of scent, like rainforest leaf litter have only recently been considered. The scientists also demonstrated that even laboratory raised clownfish shared the preference of swimming towards the scented water.
Based on an articles written by:
Choi, Charles, B. “Scientists Learn How Nemo Finds His Way Home”. August 26, 2008.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/080826-nemo-home.html
Dixon, et al. “Coral reef fish smell leaves to find island homes”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Published online: July 2008. http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/b0081qj3k3268j34/fulltext.pdf?page=1
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