First record of association between Tamoya haplonema (Cnidaria: Cubozoa) and stromateid fish, with a review on interactions between fish and cubozoan jellyfishes

Abstract

Jellyfish-fish interactions have long been reported, most of these related to medusae as ichthyoplankton predators. Conversely, associations are much less documented, most involving scyphozoan jellyfishes in comparison to cubozoans. We report for the first time the association between the cubozoan Tamoya haplonema and stromateid fish, along with a review of all published cubomedusae-fish interactions. Four individuals of Peprilus cf. crenulatus, were observed swimming around the tentacles and subumbrellar cavity of an individual of T. haplonema during a SCUBA dive on the southern coast of Brazil. This behavior has been noted before, in which fish roam around the tentacles, avoiding them, and may move inside the subumbrellar cavity if threatened. In the review of cubomedusae-fish interactions, over 20 reports involve predation on fish whilst only 6 involve associations, which is much less than the over 80 associations described for scyphomedusae. This emphasizes the scarcity of reports on associations compared to predation, as well as of interactions of fishes with cubozoans if compared to scyphozoans. This could be due to host preference or even the large spatial and temporal variability in the occurrence of the former. Furthermore, even though there are no indications of species-specific interactions, reports of associations with cubozoans only involve fish species from the families Carangidae and Stromateidae, which produce pelagic young that have the highest potential for these associations. Future studies may address the possibility of size relationships in jellyfish-fish associations, as well as potential host preferences by the fish consorts.