Monday, August 2, 2004

Deep Sea Skeletal Termites!

The bizarre case of the bone-eating worms (MSNBC - Science - 30 July 2004 - Daniel Kane)

Worms anchored to the skeleton of a young gray whale in a watery canyon off the coast of California are the first known whalebone-eating marine worms.

At this all-you-can-eat whalebone buffet, female marine worms never leave once they dig in. Males never visit the buffet — they live inside the females.

Such mama's boys!

The worms are the latest discovery in a branch of biology focused on the life that springs up on sunken whale carcasses. These carcasses — “whale falls,” in science-speak — dot the ocean floor and sustain colorful and mysterious oases of life, according to Science author Robert Vrijenhoek, a researcher from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif. ...

The largest female tubeworms the scientists recovered are about as long as your index finger and as thick as a pencil. They have an outer tube, an inner muscular trunk, an egg-carrying oviduct and plenty of space to house the males. A large egg sac embedded in the bone is sheathed in bacteria-filled tissue that grows farther into the dead bone, like the roots of a plant. ...

The bacteria in the roots help digest the fats in the bones and transfer the nutrients to the worms. ...

The worms are topped with red or red-and-white striped feathery structures called “palps.” Hemoglobin in the palps provides the red color and captures oxygen for both the worms and the bacteria living inside them. ...

Even though the scientists created a genus for the worms which translates as “bone devourers,” ["helminthicus osteophagi"? -- EBB] only the females eat bones.

The microscopic, yet sexually mature, males abstain from the whalebone diet. Instead, the dwarf males feed on internal yolk droplets — fatty leftovers of the eggs from which they developed. ...

Full-grown males haven’t changed much in appearance since their days as larvae — aside from some hairs on their front sides and hooks on their backsides.

The differences between males and females from the same species are among the most extreme in the world. ...

Sperm cells from packs of males compete to fertilize eggs moving up a tube toward the egg release site at the female’s feathery top. The largest female the scientists studied housed 111 males.

A worm brothel, in reverse?

Of the many young worms that find themselves free in the open ocean, only a few land on a dead whale. The scientists hypothesize that worm larvae that land on whalebone develop into females. Larvae landing on female worms develop into males. Worms that don’t land on a mammal carcass or female worm usually die.

I have a suspicion these buggers could be "gengineered" [my possible neologism for genetic engineering] to extract nutirnets or posions from people's bones.

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