The Cleaner

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The Cleaner

In THE CLEANER, Buck (King Orba) is a middle-aged house cleaner in Southern California struggling to make ends meet. He lives in an RV camp next to his ailing mother Sharon (Shelley Long), who suffers from arthritis. As his financial situation grows increasingly dire, he loses one of his oldest customers (Luke Wilson), who tries to make up for it by telling Buck about a neighbor who may be looking for someone to hire. Buck meets with the neighbor, Carlene (Lynda Carter), a former torch singer who wants Buck not for cleaning her house, but to track down her estranged son. Carlene offers him a hefty sum of much-needed money, and so Buck begins the search for Andrew. As the search takes him far outside his comfort zone, Buck gets help from his cop brother Craig, as well as his weed-dealing neighbor James. As Buck learns the real reason why Carlene wants to reunite with her son, he continues his efforts, and a violent altercation with tragic consequences reveals the fragile bonds of family and relationships in the face of past mistakes, shortcomings, and the struggles that so many face in day-to-day life.

As Buck, the struggling housecleaner given a job he can't refuse, King Orba imbues him with the right level of weariness. The ensemble cast has a ridiculous amount of cameo appearances, and these characters heighten this sense of trying to not only endure in this world, but also to maintain a sense of hope and even dreams for a better life ahead. Like many indie-dramas, this might not be for those looking for lots of action, but The Cleaner reveals once again that solid acting, relatable characters, and a good story can do so much more on a limited budget than a blockbuster movie with a weak story and cliched characters.

When middle-aged house cleaner Buck Enderly (Orba) takes on an eccentric new client (Carter), he gets roped into locating her estranged son (Fernandez). Buck tracks down the disturbed young man but in another twist of fate becomes an accomplice to a violent crime. Buck must then decide whether to hide the truth from his family or come clean with everyone and move on with his life.

After 8.5 years, the size frequency distributions of the damselfishes Pomacentrus moluccensis, and of P. amboinensis when two reefs with very few individuals were omitted, were shifted towards smaller individuals on reefs without L. dimidiatus. In contrast, after the preliminary removal of L. dimidiatus there had been no difference in the estimated mean size of P. moluccensis per reef between treatments after 3 and 6 months. One likely consequence of this decreased size after 8.5 years is a decreased number and size of reproductively active adults per reef. Since female size and fecundity are highly correlated in damselfishes [25], reproductive output should be decreased on reefs without cleaner fish. P. moluccensis and other damselfishes are cleaned relatively infrequently compared with other clients included in the study [10], suggesting that any benefits of cleaning may be more pronounced in other, more frequently cleaned or heavily parasitised species.

We did not find an effect of cleaner fish presence on the abundance of P. moluccensis or P. amboinensis. This suggests that the smaller size of individuals in the absence of cleaners is not due to factors that increase abundance, such as increased post-settlement migration, a behaviour that is also rare in these damselfishes [26], nor to increased recruitment. It is possible that the populations of these species are constrained more by habitat and social dynamics as they live in corals [27] and in small social groups [28], respectively. Complex interactions between larval recruits and adults [29] and the large variation in recruitment events [26] may have also obscured any effect of cleaner fish presence. Multiple opposing indirect effects may also be acting concurrently; for example, the reduction in visitors (which included piscivores) on reefs without cleaner fish may increase prey survival.

Since the abundances of P. moluccensis or P. amboinensis were not affected by cleaner presence, the shifts in size distributions may have been due to decreased rates of growth where cleaner fish were absent. Indeed, in the absence of cleaners, P. moluccensis individuals had a lower growth rate and more parasitic copepod juveniles but this occurred only in larger individuals [30]. The risk of infection with other clients' ectoparasites may also be higher on reefs without cleaners if other clients are also more parasitized on such reefs [14], [19], [20]. The changes in size distributions of P. moluccensis and P. amboinensis are potentially also the consequence of indirect effects on fish health. For example, aggression from a piscivore towards nearby fish is reduced in the presence of L. dimidiatus[31]; this could, in turn, increase prey growth. This is the first time the presence of a cleaner organism has been shown to benefit (in terms of size) client individuals and confirms that cleaning is indeed a mutualism at this location, providing a firm foundation for studies of cooperation using this system (e.g. [2]).

While the species richness of resident fish (mostly damselfishes) per reef was not affected by cleaner presence after 18 months, it was lower after 8.5 years on reefs without cleaners. These results suggest that this effect of cleaners became apparent during this period. After 8.5 years, residents were also 37% less abundant, a parameter never previously measured. That the abundances of P. moluccensis and P. amboinensis were not affected by cleaner presence, however, indicates that only the abundance of some species was affected. Most resident species cannot and will not move readily to another part of the reef or patch reef to seek cleaning if no cleaning stations are available in their home range [32]. For these species, the benefits of being cleaned are perhaps not greater than the costs of traveling to a cleaner, which may include increased predation risk and energy output and loss of territory. On our isolated experimental reefs, swimming to another reef would involve a very high predation risk. Furthermore, the costs of not being cleaned may be lower for residents because they are smaller, with fewer and different ectoparasites compared to larger fishes [33]. Thus, the impact of cleaner fish removal may be less immediate in such fish and may only become detectable over a longer period. Consequently, changes to the community structure of resident fishes are likely not due to migration, but other factors, including reduced recruitment and mortality, associated with increased parasitism in the absence of cleaners but also unknown indirect effects. However, Bshary [4] found a reduction in the species richness of residents when L. dimidiatus was removed from reefs in the Red Sea, which was detected after 4 to 20 months. In Bshary's study, reefs were smaller (volume: 0.8 to 22 m3), the species composition of clients was different, and species richness was lower, factors which all may contribute to how quickly an effect of cleaning is observed. Furthermore, abundance was not measured in the Red Sea, so it is possible that individuals of absent species were replaced by individuals from the remaining species. Finally, Simpson's diversity index did not differ with cleaner presence for residents in our study; this suggests that the relative abundances across resident species were relatively even, regardless of cleaner presence.

This is the first study to consider juveniles separately from adult clients. The abundance of visitor juveniles was 65% lower in the absence of cleaners, suggesting that cleaner absence may decrease recruitment success or increase post-settlement migration of visitor species. Indeed, attacks by single parasitic gnathiid isopods decrease the successful settlement of P. amboinensis larvae (13mm, standard length), by affecting their performance as measured by swimming and oxygen consumption [12], and many visitor juveniles settle at a similar size (A.S.G. pers. obs.). If such gnathiids are not removed from fish by cleaner fish or gnathiid population densities are higher on reefs without cleaner fish, this could result in a reduction in juvenile abundance. Dascyllus damselfish larvae can recognise the cleaner fish L. phthirophagus[34]. Therefore, if larvae select reefs because of the presence of cleaner fish, cleaner absence may reduce their abundance. Over the long term, these effects on juveniles could lead to a reduction in the number recruited to the adult population. Differential survival and habitat choice during settlement are well known in damselfishes (e.g. [28]); however, the effect of cleaning remains unexplored.

For adults of visitor species, local abundance and species richness were lower on reefs without L. dimidiatus compared with control reefs both after 18 months and 8.5 years. This indicates the pattern likely persisted during this period. After 8.5 yrs, the Simpson's diversity index was also affected by cleaner presence but this was related to reef area, with a decrease with decreasing reef area on reefs without cleaners and no association with area on controls. Since visitor species richness increased with area, regardless of cleaner presence, while abundance did not, the lower species richness on smaller reefs may have made the diversity of such reefs more vulnerable to cleaner absence. This pattern may be related to habitat diversity, which often positively affects species richness [35]. The observed shifts in both abundance and richness may be non-independent results if richness increases with abundance simply based on random expectations of sampling.

The effects of cleaner fish on clients are unlikely to have been a temporary effect due to disturbance from the removal of L. dimidiatus shortly before the observations were made as this occurred only on two reefs, and involved only two juvenile cleaner individuals. More importantly, collecting cleaners was done quickly and controls were similarly disturbed by counting L. dimidiatus on most surveys and leaving collecting equipment on the reef during counts. 041b061a72