Ari Daniel

Granted.

And climbing fish.

And rearing a rare little Pokemon-like fish.

You got it.

So Laurie Mitchell is a marine biologist at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

And his first step to solving this mystery was to raise baby tomato clownfish in the lab and then transfer them to one of four experimental tanks.

He wanted to see what triggered the fish to lose their stripes.

So in two of the tanks, one with just water and one where he added a plastic anemone,

The young fish more or less looked the same 20 days later.

In the third tank, with live anemone, the white stripes faded only slightly.

But it was in the fourth tank, with a live anemone inhabited by a pair of adult clownfish, where things were different.

The little fish there rapidly began losing all their stripes except the head bar.

Well, Laurie also found a host of changes in gene expression, including those associated with cell death, which affected the cells producing the white coloration.

These cells basically fragmenting and shriveling up and dying.

And it looks like hormones produced by the fish's thyroid may have been responsible for triggering that change in gene expression.

Always.

Lori thinks that when young fish first arrive at an anemone, their small size and multiple stripes signal to the older fish and the adult fish that they're no threat to the pecking order because clownfish have this rigid hierarchy on the anemone.

So basically, tomato clownfish in an unpredictable world appear to flexibly adjust when they lose their stripes to fit into a group.

Correct.

Okay, on to fish number two.