The bone-eating worms are bizarre

The worm lives on the skeleton of a small gray whale in an undersea gulf off California as the first known whale-eating seaworm. On the whale bone, once the worms have been caught, it will never come out. Male worms are not chiseled because they live inside female worms. The bacteria in the 'root' part of the worm help them eat whale bone fat. A study of these two new species of worms has been published in the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

This worm is the latest discovery in the biological branch that focuses on the life that arises on the bodies of sunken whales. These fish corpses sink to the ocean floor and become mysterious and colorful oases, according to Science journalist Robert Vrijenhoek, a researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute at Moss Landing, Calif.

Bone-eating worms may play an important role in the nutritional cycle. In terms of food mass, a dead whale is equivalent to thousands of years of "sea snow", life-sustaining carbon molecules falling slowly to the ocean floor.

Worms have 'roots' and 'feathers'

The largest female worm worms scientists discovered were about as long as the index finger and about a pencil big. They have an outside tube, a long, muscular body inside, an egg hatching egg and plenty of room for males. A large bag of eggs is eaten into the bone, surrounded by a tissue full of bacteria, growing into the dead bone like tree roots.

These roots are very helpful for the bone-penetrating bacteria from the front, or from the bone surface, according to study author Shana Goffredi of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

The bacteria in the roots help digest fat in the bones and transfer nutrients to the worms. How bacteria and worms communicate and transfer food back and forth is still a mystery.

Above the worm, there are white red or red filamentous hair structures called "tentacles". The hemoglobin in the tentacles makes them red, carrying oxygen to both the worm and its symbiotic bacteria.

This worm has a distant family name with large pipe worms found in hydrothermal vents and cold water slots. Hydrothermal worms must also rely on symbiotic bacteria to extract nutrients from their environment.

Discover a golden worm

Vrijenhoek

Scientists discovered the whale carcass while looking for the boys of Monterey Bay. When the radar screen on a submarine lit up, Vrijenhoek thought they had plunged into a 55-gallon drum that someone had kicked off the ship. Instead of rubbish, their remote control ship transmitted images of dazzling red worms surrounding the jaw, skull and ribs of a small gray whale carcass. The tissues, fins and many organs of the fish still cling to the skeleton. Perhaps the whale carcass fell to the bottom of the ravine a few months before scientists discovered it. The depth of the gap protected the tissues and organs against predatory sharks and starving hagfish stocks.

When scientists on the train controlled the ship's robotic arm to pull out a whale bone array, Vrijenhoek thought it was a known worm.

However, when he saw the mucus clinging to the whale bone, he knew that he had discovered a gold worm. In 1995, Vrijenhoek and a group of scientists led by whale cadaver expert Craig Smith of the University of Hawaii found similar tubes but not worms. Without worms to dissect and no DNA to analyze, they called invisible creatures living in the tube a "green mucus worm".

Now he has a pipe and has a worm. Within a week of discovering them, the scientists concluded that their DNA was not like any other type of DNA from other known worms. Further analysis divided the worms into two new species, both of which are bone-eating Osedax.

The smaller worm, Osedax frankpressi, has white and red hairs. The larger worm, Osedax rubiplumus, has completely red hairs.

Male dwarfs

Although scientists form a new breed for these worms, the name means "those who like bones", but only the female worms eat bones. Very small male worms, even adults, don't eat whale bones. Instead, the dwarf males eat the egg yolk droplets inside - the greasy excesses of the eggs they have developed since then.

Adult males do not look much different from when they were larvae, in addition to some hairs on the front and hooks on the back. In this worm, males and females are different from each other as two extremes. "If you see a male worm, you would think it's a larva, but it can produce semen," Vrijenhoek said.

This "sexual dimorphism" phenomenon is particularly surprising because males and females in seaworms near them are often the same size, according to research author Greg Rouse of the South Australian and Greater Museum. Study Adelaide in Adelaide, southern Australia.

Rouse discovered tiny males inside the female after colleagues sent him a piece of whale bone surrounded by red-tinted worms.

Sperm cells from packets of males compete to conceive eggs. They move toward the egg area at the female's furry head. Inside the largest female researchers studied, there were 111 males.

Among the many small worms helpless in the vast ocean, only a few responded to a dead whale. Scientists hypothesize that worm larvae that find whale bones will develop into females. Larvae landing on females will develop into males. Worms that can't find mammal bodies or females will often die.