Clownfish aren't just colorful; they're calculating. A new study finds that baby tomato anemonefish ditch their "baby stripes" faster when they're hanging around adults, reports EuroNews, essentially altering their look to lock in status in their tightly ranked social groups. In these anemones, only one dominant pair breeds, and younger fish advertise their low status with extra white bars. Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology expected juveniles to hang on to those stripes when adults were around; instead, cameras showed the opposite.
Scientists plunked baby clownfish in four tanks: one with just water, the second added a plastic anemone, the third with a live anemone, and the fourth with a live anemone and two adult clownfish. After 20 days, the clownfish in the first two tanks looked pretty much the same, the fish in the third tank sported slightly faded stripes, but the fish in the fourth tank got down to the serious business of shedding their stripes. "They were almost completely not visible at all," lead author Laurie Mitchell tells NPR. "They had pretty much diffused completely into the surrounding reddish-orange skin."
The work, published in PLOS Biology, suggests that the color patterns of clownfish are not fixed decorations but a flexible tool for navigating an uncertain social world. Researchers suspect the extra bars help new arrivals appear harmless at first, but once they've secured a spot, shedding stripes may signal a move up the ladder. At first, "they're almost recluse—they're going between the tentacles," Mitchell says. "But after that, there's no need to keep that multi-bar form because by the time it's gone, they've integrated into the hierarchy, and the function is fulfilled. Even though you're a bottom rank member, you're still a member."
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