Baseline Population Study

Importance: The Hawaiian shrimp goby and its symbiotic snapping shrimp have only been studied thus far by Lynn Moehring (now Preston) in her 1972 thesis on the communication systems of the goby-shrimp symbiosis (Moehring, 1972). This study was not intended to analyze the ecology of the goby-shrimp pair, but instead look at communication systems. Most of the measurements were done in a tank. Any ecological observations that were taken were only observational and rare at that. In fact, only three holes were sampled for their constituents. Nothing is known about the densities of shrimp gobies in the bay, their breeding cycles, their lifespan, their daily rhythm patterns or the frequency of multiple gobies and shrimp in a single hole. Other studies have looked at these variables such as daily rhythm patterns (Karplus 1976, 1992; Yanagisawa 1982), and population structure (Yanagisawa 1982, 1984). Before I can compare the Hawaiian shrimp-goby (which is in a completely different genus) to these other symbiotic pairs, I must first ascertain that the Hawaiian species has the same dynamics (population dynamics and behavioral dynamics). It will also be instrumental to the scientific literature, as no ecological studies have been done on this species.