JAW-DROPPING: A GROUP OF GROUPER(S)
Today is going to be about Jaws – not those sinister-music-sharky types, but a look at the dentition, gill arrangements and oral hygiene of groupers(s). First, though, the vexed question of the correct plural for a group of these fish. I tackled the complex 3-option correct plural of OCTOPUS a while back. Now another problem piscine plural has cropped up.
The short answer is that the plural is usually ‘groupers’, but also – perhaps less commonly – ‘grouper’ (there’s a similar situation with plural of ‘hare’). One online source suggests ‘grouperer’, but that just seems cumbersome. I think there may be a useful distinction to be made here. When talking about grouper of the same species, one could say “I saw 17 Nassau grouper today”. But where reference is made to mixed species, “I saw plenty of groupers today” implies that there was more than one species – black and tiger, maybe.
In some of these photos you’ll notice tiny fish attending to the grouper. These are CLEANERS and they are an essential part of the bodily and oral hygiene routine for larger fish species. The big fish call in at so-called CLEANING STATIONS, where the tiddlers remove parasites and dead skin, and polish up the gills. They will even enter the fish’s mouth to pick bits from between its teeth – the deal being that they will not be eaten. This mutually beneficial arrangement is called ‘cleaning symbiosis’ and is carried out by (for example) gobies, wrasses and cleaner shrimps.
Peterson’s cleaner shrimps and cleaner wrasse
Some of these photos show groupers with open gills as well as open mouths, an invitation to the cleaners to do their work. I’d intended to write about how and why gills work but I’ve thought better of it. There’s a lot of detail about chemical exchange involved that, when I looked more closely, seemed rather dull… and therefore outside the remit of this blog, which includes trying to avoid ‘dull’. If you really want to know more, Wiki has a good article HERE. Good luck with that….
Credits: All photos Melinda Riger, Grand Bahama Scuba
