WOULD you keep going to the same dry-cleaner if they ripped you off and did a bad job? Of course not, and it seems that similar market forces are at work on coral reefs, where fish that perform a cleaning service risk losing customers if they get sloppy.
Scientists studying these fish conclude that healthy competition is sometimes important in ecology, helping to stabilise co-operation between species.
Redouan Bshary of the University of Cambridge and Daniel Schäffer of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Physiology in Seewiesen, Germany, have seen a free-market economy at work in the interactions between cleaner…
