Ecology

One of the questions asked by ecologists is, "What habitat does an organism live in?" A lot of the studies that have been done on shrimp gobies, that describe their habitat and how they use it seem to be only side notes or casual observations in the scheme of a larger taxonomic study (Karplus 1987).

There have been a few detailed studies, however, on habitat segregation and the use by goby and shrimp. These studies for the most part, show a high degree of habitat seggregation (see Cummins 1979). For example, in the Seychelle Islands where Polunin and Lubbock (1979) observed 13 species of goby, 5 were only found in one habitat and an additional 4 were only found in 2 habitats. Yanagisawa (1978) studied 20 species of shrimp-goby in southern Japan and found that they distrubuted themselves acording to distinct depth and bottom substrate preferences. Finally, Karplus (1984) showed in the northern Red Sea that while gobies may vary a little with debth and microhabitat, they show relatively little variation compared to the shrimp that are actually digging the holes.

Karplus' work (above), shows how well segregated different species of gobies and shrimp can be in relation substrate.