Watch 'superorganism' created by tiny worms — the first time it's ever been spotted in the wild
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.
Nematodes have been spotted forming writhing towers of tiny worms in the wild for the first time, according to a report in the journal Current Biology.
The bizarre behavior had previously only been observed in experimental settings, thought to be a competitive attempt to escape from the rest of the group. However, new images of these towers forming in the wild hint at a more mutually-beneficial motivation.
The footage was captured by researchers in Konstanz, Germany, on fallen apples and pears at local orchards. The team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the University of Konstanz were then able to combine these images with follow-up laboratory experiments to demonstrate that the 'towering' behavior happens naturally, and that the worms engage in such behaviour as a means of mass transit.
'I was ecstatic when I saw these natural towers for the first time,' said senior author Serena Ding, group leader at the MPI-AB, describing the moment when co-author Ryan Greenway, a biologist at the University of Konstanz, sent her a video recording from the field. 'For so long natural worm towers existed only in our imaginations. But with the right equipment and lots of curiosity, we found them hiding in plain sight.'
That curiosity also revealed some interesting aspects of worm cooperation. While the researchers observed many nematode species crawling inside the fruit, only a single species in the same developmental period — a tough larval stage known as a 'dauer' — participated in tower building. That level of species specificity in worm tower 'construction' hinted that there might be more driving the behavior than a seemingly random creature cluster.
Related: Nematode resurrected from Siberian permafrost lay dormant for 46,000 years
'A nematode tower is not just a pile of worms,' said study first author Daniela Perez, a postdoctoral researcher at MPI-AB. 'It's a coordinated structure, a superorganism in motion.'
The paper suggested these observations could serve as a 'missing link' into behavior of similar organisms. Such towering behavior has previously been observed in slime molds, fire ants and spider mites, but it is still relatively rare in nature.
To see if other kinds of worms could also form such a 'superorganism', researchers created conditions to coach the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans into assembling into similar structures. C. elegans is a model organism that is widely studied for both its behavior and biology.
Perez stuck a toothbrush bristle into a food-free agar plate to act as a sort scaffold — then unleashed the worms. Within two hours, the C. elegans formed a tower using the bristle as its spine. Some smaller clusters of worms reached out exploratory 'arms,' while others bridged gaps between spaces. And when researchers tapped the top of the tower with a glass pick, the worms wriggled toward that stimulus.
'The towers are actively sensing and growing,' says Perez. 'When we touched them, they responded immediately, growing toward the stimulus and attaching to it.'
RELATED STORIES
—Why do worms come out in the rain?
—Australian 'trash parrots' have now developed a local 'drinking tradition'
—Wandering salamander: The tree‑climbing amphibian with a blood‑powered grip
The researchers also wondered if there was some sort of worm hierarchy driving this activity. Did younger worms have to do all the work? Stronger ones? Smaller, weaker ones?
It turns out that the roundworms were remarkably egalitarian in their efforts. Unlike the orchard-based nematodes, the laboratory-bound C. elegans represented a range of life stages, from larval to adult — but they all pitched in. That suggests 'towering' may be a more generalized strategy for group movement than previously thought.
'Our study opens up a whole new system for exploring how and why animals move together,' says Ding.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Jellyfish Lake: Palau's saltwater pool with a toxic bottom and surface waters brimming with millions of jellyfish
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. QUICK FACTS Name: Jellyfish Lake, or "Ongeim'l Tketau" in Palauan Location: Palau, Western Pacific Coordinates: 7.161200817499221, 134.37633688402798 Why it's incredible: The lake has three layers, including one inhabited by millions of jellyfish and another containing poisonous gas. Jellyfish Lake is a pool of saltwater on Eil Malk island in Palau that is brimming with golden jellyfish — a subspecies not found anywhere else on Earth. The lake typically houses around 5 million jellyfish, according to the Coral Reef Research Foundation (CRRF) — although there have been years, including 2005, when the number of jellies exceeded 30 million. Jellyfish Lake is highly stratified, meaning it is separated into distinct layers. Golden jellyfish inhabit the top layer, which extends from the surface down to about 43 feet (13 meters) deep. Between 43 and 50 feet (13 to 15 m) deep, the lake contains pink bacteria that prevents light and oxygen from reaching the bottom layer of the lake, which sits between 50 and 100 feet (15 to 30 m) deep. The lake is connected to the ocean through small cracks in Eil Malk's limestone rock, but it is nevertheless considered an isolated ecosystem, according to CRRF learning resources. Jellyfish Lake formed toward the end of the last ice age, roughly 12,000 years ago, due to ice melt and sea level rise. Sea water filled depressions in Palau's islands and elsewhere, creating three types of lakes: stratified lakes, such as Jellyfish Lake; mixed lakes, which are connected to the ocean via large tunnels; and transitional lakes, which are also connected to the ocean, but via smaller tunnels. Related: 'A challenge and an opportunity for evolution': The extreme, hidden life thriving in Earth's most acidic and alkaline lakes Jellyfish Lake's pink layer exists because the conditions in that layer suit a type of bacteria that are pink in color. These bacteria create a barrier between the lake's oxygenated top layer and its oxygen-free bottom layer. This barrier bobs up and down depending on density changes in the water. The lack of oxygen beneath the pink layer is deadly for most life. What's more, plant and animal decomposition at the bottom of Jellyfish Lake releases poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas, which means only certain microbes can survive there, according to the CRRF. Jellyfish Lake's endemic golden jellyfish (Mastigias papua etpisoni) population likely evolved from a handful of spotted jellyfish (Mastigias papua) that became trapped when sea levels dropped following the lake's formation. Unique conditions inside the lake forced the jellies to adapt, leading to a new subspecies, which is named after Palau's former president, Ngiratkel Etpison. MORE INCREDIBLE PLACES —Lake Salda: The only place on Earth similar to Jezero crater on Mars —Lake Kivu: The ticking time bomb that could one day explode and unleash a massive, deadly gas cloud —Rainbow swamp: The flooded forest in Virginia that puts on a magical light show every winter Golden jellyfish have a symbiotic relationship with single-celled, photosynthetic algae that give them nutrients in exchange for a place to live. The jellyfish follow an unusual migration pattern that involves swimming towards the sun as it rises and sets, always avoiding the lake's edges where jellyfish-eating sea anemones (Entacmaea medusivora) lurk. These predatory anemones prefer the shadows, so golden jellyfish have evolved to stay in sunlit waters. Every morning, the jellies crowd along the lake's eastern shadow line, and visitors may occasionally see a "wall" of jellyfish forming underwater, according to the CRRF. While golden jellyfish have stinging cells, the sting is so mild that humans can't feel it. Visitors can safely swim in Jellyfish Lake, but people should take care not to accidentally introduce non-native species to the lake, as these can, and already do, endanger the fragile ecosystem, according to the CRRF. Discover more incredible places, where we highlight the fantastic history and science behind some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
A hidden 'super-Earth' exoplanet is dipping in and out of its habitable zone
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A huge "super-Earth" with an extreme climate that results in it being habitable for only part of its orbit has been discovered orbiting a star 2,472 light years away. And the most remarkable thing is, it was discovered without even being directly detected. The discovery of the exoplanet, a super-Earth called Kepler-735c, is all down to something called transit timing variations, or TTVs for short. Let's set the scene. One of the primary ways of discovering exoplanets is by looking for when they transit, or pass in front of, their star. As they do so, they block a small fraction of that star's light, and, based on the size of this dip in stellar brightness, we can determine how large the transiting planet must be. Indeed, this was how the most successful exoplanet hunter so far, NASA's Kepler space telescope, discovered over 3,300 confirmed exoplanets and thousands more candidates. There are downsides to detecting exoplanets via transits, however. One is that the technique is biased toward planets on short orbits close to their star, which means they transit more often and are easier to see. Transits also require a precise alignment between the orbital plane of a planetary system and our line of sight. Even a small tilt might mean we cannot see planets on wider orbits transiting. Those unseen planets on wider orbits can still make their presence felt, however, in the form of TTVs. Ordinarily, transits are as regular as clockwork, but in some cases astronomers have noticed that a planet's transit can be delayed, or occur ahead of schedule, and that this is being caused by the gravity of other planets tugging on the transiting world. Sometimes we can see those other planets transiting as well — the seven-planet TRAPPIST-1 system is a great example. Often, though, we can't see the planet that is causing the variations, but the size and frequency of the TTVs can tell us about the orbital period and mass of these hidden worlds. One such planet that has been found to experience TTVs is Kepler-725b. It's a gas giant planet orbiting a yellow sun-like star that was discovered by the now-defunct Kepler spacecraft. "By analyzing the TTV signals of Kepler-725b, a gas giant planet with a 39.64-day period in the same system, the team has successfully inferred the mass and orbital parameters of the hidden planet Kepler-725c," Sun Leilei, of the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in a statement. Sun is the lead author of a new study revealing the existence of this hidden world. Kepler-725c's mass is quite significant — 10 times greater than the mass of Earth. This places it in the upper echelons of a type of planet called super-Earths — giant, probably rocky worlds. We don't have an example of a super-Earth in our solar system, so we don't really know what such planets are like. Planetary scientists are still grappling with theoretical models that attempt to describe the properties of super-Earth worlds. Would they be wrapped in a dense atmosphere? Could they maintain plate tectonics? How would their higher surface gravity affect the evolution of life? Definitive answers to these questions have not yet been forthcoming. Meanwhile, the planet's orbit is unusual to say the least. It is highly elliptical, with an eccentricity of 0.44. For comparison, Earth's orbit has an eccentricity of 0.0167 and is therefore close to circular; at the other extreme, an orbital eccentricity of 1 would be parabolic. Kepler-7825c's orbit is oval-shaped, meaning that at some points in its orbit it is much closer to its star than at other times. While overall Kepler-725c receives 1.4 times as much heat from its star as Earth does from the sun, this is just the average over the course of its orbit, and at times it is receiving less. If Kepler-725c has an atmosphere, then the difference in solar heating at different times in its orbit could wreak havoc on its climate. In fact, the high orbital eccentricity actually means that the exoplanet only spends part of its orbit in the habitable zone, which is a circular zone around the star at a distance where temperatures are suitable for liquid water on a planet's surface. Related Stories: — Exoplanets: Everything you need to know about the worlds beyond our solar system — Scientists discover super-Earth exoplanets are more common in the universe than we thought — Does exoplanet K2-18b host alien life or not? Here's why the debate continues Does this mean that Kepler-725c is only habitable for part of its 207.5-Earth-day year? What would happen to any life that might exist on the planet during the periods that it is outside of the habitable zone? Again, these are theoretical problems that scientists have been wrestling with, but now the existence of Kepler-725c suddenly makes them very real problems. However, because we do not see Kepler-725c transit, it will not be possible to probe its atmosphere with the James Webb Space Telescope, which uses sunlight filtered through a planet's atmosphere to make deductions about the properties and composition of that atmosphere. Fortunately, there may be more such worlds out there to study. It is expected that when the European Space Agency's PLATO (PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars) spacecraft launches in 2026 as our most sensitive exoplanet-detecting mission yet, it will be able to find many more worlds through TTVs. And, unlike radial velocity and transit measurements, which tend to be biased toward finding short-period exoplanets, TTVs open a window onto planets on wider orbits that are not seen to transit. "[Kepler-725c's discovery] demonstrates the potential of the TTV technique to detect low-mass planets in habitable zones of sun-like stars," said Sun. By doing so, the TTV method will help further the search for life in the universe, if only in providing more statistics as to the numbers of habitable zone planets that are out there. The discovery of Kepler-725c was reported on Tuesday (June 3) in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Two stunning conjunctions will light up the night sky in June. Here's how to see them.
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Two rare twilight pairings will grace the June 2025 sky as the moon first passes close to elusive Mercury and then gets stunningly close to Mars. Mercury is typically difficult to see and the conjunction between Mars and the moon will be particularly close, so both will be special sights for skywatchers. The moon and Mercury meet-up comes as the "Swift Planet," which orbits the sun every 88 days, emerges from our star's glare into the post-sunset sky between June 21 and 30. According to NASA, Mercury will be visible just above the western horizon for 30 to 45 minutes after sunset. On Thursday (June 26), a very slim crescent moon will appear between Mercury and the two bright stars in the constellation Gemini — Pollux and Castor — causing a brief line of lights in the post-sunset night sky. On Friday (June 27), the crescent moon will be higher in the sky, just above Mercury. Precisely how low Mercury is, and how long it's observable during this period, depends on your location, so check or Stellarium. That also applies to seeing what is arguably the skywatching highlight of the month on Sunday (June 29), when amateur astronomers will get a stunning view of a 24%-illuminated crescent moon directly beneath Mars in the constellation Leo, with just 0.2 degrees (12 arcminutes) separating them. The two worlds will appear so close that a fingertip held at arm's length will cover them. RELATED STORIES —The 10 best stargazing events of 2025 —Full moons of 2025: When is the next full moon? —Have all 8 planets ever aligned? The sight will be high in the western sky and easily visible without any equipment, but the two celestial bodies will be so close that they'll fit into the same field of view of a telescope. Although it's rare to see the moon and Mercury together in the night sky, and the closeness of the moon and Mars is also unusual, conjunctions between our natural satellite and planets are not uncommon. Planets orbit the sun on more or less the same plane, called the ecliptic. It's the same path the sun takes through the daytime sky as seen from Earth. The moon's orbit of Earth isn't quite the same, but its rather wobbly path differs from the ecliptic by only five degrees. Twice a month, the moon crosses the ecliptic (hence the name, because that sometimes causes solar and lunar eclipses), so it can come particularly close to a planet as seen from our terrestrial viewpoint. The next significant close planetary conjunction will be the meeting of Venus and Jupiter in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 12, when the two brightest planets will form a dazzlingly close pair. Originally published on Live Science.
