They found and videotaped several nematode species, living out in the wild, organizing into these living worm towers—a phenomenon previously only seen in the lab.
They also encouraged and studied the creation of worm towers in the lab with Caenorhabditis elegans, a species frequently used for research.
Though Ding and her team did hope and expect to find the worm towers in nature, they were surprised in other ways.
The researchers found no evidence of the lab worms taking on different roles inside the tower, for one.
The team’s lab experiments showed that C. elegans worms were capable of building towers throughout their lives, for instance, including adulthood.
Researchers recently found that wild nematodes, commonly referred to as roundworms, enjoy climbing on top of one another to form fleshy, writhing towers. Most of us probably would have been fine without knowing this.
German researchers described their finding in a new study that was published in Current Biology on Thursday. They discovered and recorded a number of nematode species that were forming these living worm towers in the wild, a phenomenon that had only been observed in laboratories before. The results also demonstrate that the microscopic worms use these structures to scale animals or objects that can transport them to different locations, though there are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding this behavior.
Serena Ding, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and senior study author, said the towers are not exactly unknown in the worm science community. However, because no one had ever observed the behavior in wild nematodes, it had become somewhat legendary. It might have limited the utility of any research on the behavior if it had meant that the worms were only forced to construct towers in a laboratory setting.
It’s just that I’ve always found it annoying. “Yeah, we’re researching nematode collective behavior in the tower context and other contexts, but is it real?” Ding, who leads a nematode research lab at Max Planck, told Gizmodo. As a result, when I began my research program four years ago, I made a concerted effort to find nematodes in large quantities and at a high density. We then achieved success. “”.
Finding and documenting examples of natural worm tower construction in the decomposing fruits scattered throughout the orchards close to the University of Konstanz (one of the three locations where the Institute is based) took months for Ding’s colleagues, especially co-author Ryan Greenway. After locating the towers, the scientists took a few inside the lab for additional analysis. Additionally, they promoted and investigated the construction of worm towers in the laboratory using the commonly used research species Caenorhabditis elegans.
“Yes, they exist,” is the crucial conclusion. The second discovery, however, is that we have verified that the towers can disperse people simultaneously,” Ding stated. Although no one has actually verified it, this [has] always been assumed to be a dispersal behavior. “.”.
The worms in these towers were seen by the researchers to either use them as a kind of bridge to cross otherwise inaccessible gaps or to cling to passing animals, such as fruit flies. Furthermore, it seemed as though the towers reacted to stimuli like being touched as a group. Although the towers themselves were always composed of a single species at a time, the fruits themselves were packed with nematodes. According to all of this, these living structures ought to be regarded as transient “superorganisms,” akin to slime molds or specific ants.
They were taken aback in other ways, even though Ding and her team did hope and expect to find the worm towers in nature.
For starters, the scientists did not discover any indication that the lab worms were assuming various roles within the tower. None of the worms seemed to have an edge over the others in terms of rising to the top of the tower because they were all equally mobile. E. the area that gains the most from this behavior. However, these worms are clonal, which means that their genetic makeup is nearly identical. Additionally, among more distantly related worms in the wild, things might not be quite as friendly.
Since not everyone is able to disperse, we are currently working to follow up on these active directions. “So who gets to leave? Are they cheating or supporting one another?” Ding asked.
These towers raise additional questions that need to be addressed. Lab tests conducted by the team revealed that C. For example, elegans worms could construct towers at any stage of their lives, including adulthood. It was previously thought that only dauer worms, a larval stage of life that some worms adopt to survive harsher environments, engaged in this behavior. But since the natural towers they discovered were constructed entirely of dauer worms, perhaps there is another factor that contributes to the behavior’s prevalence at that stage of development.
For Ding and her group, this research is just the beginning; they intend to investigate these mysteries further. Ding, however, hopes that her team’s work will already teach other worm researchers a valuable lesson. She mentions worms such as C. Scientists frequently modify elegans in the lab to observe how specific behaviors may function at the molecular level. But she contends that studying them in the real world will teach us a lot more as well.
“I want to take really well-known organisms and study them from a more natural standpoint. From a more ecological and evolutionarily relevant standpoint, I want to know not only how the behavior is produced but also what it means for the animal,” she stated. “As a worm enthusiast, I can publish a study without using a single mutant and we’re just looking at the behavior and what those behaviors say,” which makes this study significant in my opinion at least. That is very exciting to me. “.”.
For my part, I’m simply relieved that I now have more terrifying anecdotes to share at my next gathering.
