Data and code from: Competitive cleaning: Behavioural variation supports coexistence of two juvenile sympatric cleanerfishes

Cleanerfish support coral reef ecosystems by providing important services to client fishes. Cleanerfish species often coexist, but how interspecies dynamics influence cleaning networks across life-history stages remains largely unknown. Here, we investigated the effects of interspecific competition on the behaviour of two juvenile cleaner wrasses, Labroides dimidiatus and Labroides bicolor. Under competitive scenarios, L. dimidiatus exhibited higher levels of client association compared to L. bicolor, while no differences were observed under non-competitive conditions. These behavioural differences likely facilitate resource partitioning and coexistence, supporting the stability of coexisting mutualistic networks in coral reef ecosystems., , # Competitive cleaning: Behavioural variation supports coexistence of two juvenile sympatric cleanerfishes.

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.b8gtht7qg](10.5061/dryad.b8gtht7qg)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset is the result of an aquarium-based experiment conducted in November 2019 at the Centre de Recherches Insulaires et Observatoire de l’Environnement (CRIOBE) in Moorea, French Polynesia (17°31'06.9\"S, 149°50'59.4\"W). Three species of juvenile wrasse (Labridae) were used in trials: bluestreak cleanerfish (*Labroides dimidiatus*), bicolor cleanerfish (*Labroides bicolor*), and the clown coris (*Coris aygula*), with the surgeonfish (*Ctenochaetus striatus*) used as a model client. This experiment consisted of three treatments where combinations of two interspecific individuals: 1) bluestreak (cleaner) and coris (non-cleaner), 2) bicolor (cleaner) and coris (non-cleaner), and 3) bluestreak (cleaner) and bicolor (cleaner), were exposed to a client (surgeonfish) an...,