Coral reefs are noisy environments. So if you鈥檙e struggling to be heard, you might need to try something new.
Damselfish are renowned marine chatterboxes, and several species can make sounds. Until recently, we only knew about two types of call: single pulse sounds or 鈥減ops鈥� made when damselfish snap their teeth together, and 鈥渃hirps鈥� formed of multiple pulses joined up.
Now it appears damselfish have developed a new call to help them shout above the racket 鈥� you can hear it below:
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Named after its likeness to a windscreen wiper on dry glass, the wiping sound of the Ambon damselfish, Pomacentrus amboinensis, was recorded by scientists at a reef in Taiwan.
As a high-pitched tonal call, the wiping sound is completely different to the pops and chirps damselfish usually make because it is not pulsed.
鈥淚t鈥檚 almost like it鈥檚 learned a new trick,鈥� says Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter, UK.
He has been studying P. amboinensis on the Great Barrier Reef for 15 years but has only just started hearing the wiping sound. Simpson suggests that if the fish can learn how to make this new call, then it might spread socially quite quickly.
This new call, used during courtship and chase behaviours, is thought to help damselfish identify fish of its own species 听within the reef environment.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a very good way to distinguish between other fish in the sea,鈥� says Eric Parmentier at the University of Liege in Belgium, who conducted the research.
In loud coral reef environments where there are lots of overlapping sounds, the development of a new and different sound is the best way to avoid misidentification, he says.
杏吧原创s aren鈥檛 yet sure how P. amboinensis makes the wiping sound, but given its high frequency (645 herz), they have ruled out muscle contractions.
Listen to the pops and chirps below:
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Journal of Zoology
Read more: Ocean commotion: Protecting sea life from our noise; Zoologger: The only fish that cries like a baby
