Goby Communication Behavior

I have been lucky enough to film a lot of gobies during the last few years, many of them the highly interesting shrimp gobies. These fishes live in a symbiosis with shrimp, whereby a shrimp with poor vision digs a burrow, and the goby acts as a watchman at the entrance of the burrow, and communicates oncoming dangers to the shrimp.

I have gone through my videos to find some examples of this fish-crustacean communication.

An “orange alert” is signaled by the goby to the shrimp is transmitted by  a brief tail/dorsal fin-flick. The goby still remains outside of the burrow, but lets the shrimp know that danger is approaching. The shrimp usually reduces its excursions out of the burrow. Here are some instances of this behavior (the videos contain more footage but start right before the behavior):

 

A “red alert” is signaled by the goby when it completely, and quickly turns around and escapes into the shared burrow. Both animals stay underground for a few minutes. Watch this happen here: