Reef behaviors › Foureye butterflyfish

Infected rivals

Infected foureyes have more aggressive run-ins with other foureyes, mostly with other infected fish; uninfected fish rarely chase infected ones. The parasite may be steering its host toward mates or new hosts for its young.

Species involved

foureye butterflyfish Chaetodon capistratus

Where to see it in the game: Two foureye pairs on the reef, one infected.

Source: Meadows & Meadows 2003, Revista de Biología Tropical 51 (Suppl. 4):77

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Spinyhead is a free game you play in your browser: you are a spinyhead blenny, a fish about 3 cm long living in a worm hole on a Caribbean coral head. Feed, fight for a better hole, court, raise eggs and dodge predators, while everything around you behaves the way field biologists have seen it behave. Most behaviors in the game come from published field studies; the rest are borrowed from other reefs or extrapolated, and this page says which. There are 82 on these pages, and more in the game’s field notebook waiting to be found.