Fish make lots of sound on coral reefs!

Have you ever listened to your clownfish? Really sat down, stuck a hydrophone in your reef tank, and listened? No? Well here's your chance to find out what you've been missing! Lots of pops and snaps of tiny little clownfish teeth as they interact with each other to establish dominance in our tanks!

In fact, we know of over 100 families of fish that contain species that make some sort of sound. Most fish make simple sounds, series of pops and snaps - but with only maybe one or two overall patterns. There are some exceptions though - the Lusitanian toadfish makes at least four different patterns.

Damselfish, which include the ever popular Clownfish (the genus Amphiprion), have numerous species that make sounds including commonly kept species like Ocellaris, Percale, and Clarkii. Some of them are able to produce numerous patterns, but most (including our clownfish) make one or two patterns. It turns out that our reef tanks are bustling with activity, and that activity includes lots of pops, clicks, and grunts from our fish as they go about their lives in our aquariums.

Some articles I'd suggest looking at if you want to learn more about the sounds that fish make:

Overview on the Diversity of Sounds Produced by Clownfishes (Pomacentridae): Importance of Acoustic Signals in Their Peculiar Way of Life
Colleye O, Parmentier E (2012) PLOS ONE 7(11): e49179.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049179
(this is where the videos of clownfish making noise are from)

Interspecific variation of calls in clownfishes: degree of similarity in closely related species. Colleye, O., Vandewalle, P., Lanterbecq, D. et al. BMC Evol Biol 11, 365 (2011).
https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-11-365
(this is where the neat photo of clownfish teeth is from)

Hearing ability in three clownfish species. J Exp Biol 1 July 2009; 212 (13): 2023–2026. Eric Parmentier, Orphal Colleye, David Mann;
https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.030270
(this is where the graph of size vs frequency is from)

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