About Periclimenes yucatanicus (Ives, 1891)
The spotted cleaner shrimp, Periclimenes yucatanicus (Ives, 1891), reaches a length of approximately 2.5 centimetres (1 inch). Its body is transparent, marked with brown and white saddle-shaped patterns. The chelae and legs feature bold stripes in red, purple, and white, and it has two pairs of long white antennae banded with black. This shrimp occurs at depths down to around 24 metres (79 feet) in the Caribbean Sea, southern Florida, the Bahamas, and ranges as far south as Colombia. Breeding occurs in the summer, and females have been observed brooding eggs under their abdomens during July and August. After hatching, larvae go through multiple planktonic larval stages before settling on the seabed and metamorphosing into adult shrimp. The spotted cleaner shrimp lives in close symbiotic association with a sea anemone, most commonly Condylactis gigantea, Lebrunia danae, Bartholomea lucida, or Bartholomea annulata. It resides among the anemone's tentacles, and up to six individual shrimp have been observed on a single sea anemone. The shrimp swishes its antennae through the water to attract passing reef fish. When a fish stops and remains motionless beside the anemone, the shrimp emerges from the tentacles to remove and feed on the fish's external parasites and loose flakes of skin. It even enters the fish's mouth and cleans behind their gill covers, with no apparent risk of being eaten. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, this shrimp has also been found associated with the sea anemone Rhodactis sanctithomae, a species not previously recorded as a symbiont for this shrimp. Also in the Virgin Islands, it has been observed on the tentacles of the jellyfish Cassiopea.
