So far only observed in experimental contexts, the corots of nematod worms have been seen in nature: a curious survival strategy.
The nematod worms form living towers, stacked on each other to escape from one environment when resources are scarce. The bizarre strategy was already known to biologists, who had observed it in the laboratory on some occasions.
But now it has emerged that nematod worms organize themselves in these swaying cacastes also in nature. Moving like a single, superorganism Which responds to tactile stimuli and clings to any possible living foam transits nearby.
A pile of nematodes on the fruit: surprise under a microscope
The nematod worms or cylindrical worms are worms of dimensions of millimeters in size to a few decimeter that live in the wet soil or in the fresh or marine waters. One of them, the Caenorhabditis elegans (about 1 millimeter long), is a model organism widely used in biology studies.
Daniela Perez, biologist of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, observed for months under the microscope remains of apple and pears in decomposition collected in the orchards around the city of Costanza, paying attention to the Caenorhabditis elegans that were twisted in the march pulp of the fruits.
He was able to note that the nematodic worms that were in a particular larval stage called “Dauer”, in which the animal enters when he is in difficult environmental conditions, had gathered around thin protrobes of the pulp of the extended fruits outwards. Stack on each other and swaying in unisonas if to build a kind of finger stretched and moving. The discovery was described in an article on Current Biology.
One on the other to survive
“A tower of nematodes is not just a mass of worms,” explains Perez. “It is a coordinated structure, a moving superorganism.” Just as the individual worms do when they get up on the tail to emerge from the substitutes in decomposition on which they banned (and perhaps attach themselves to a passage of passage that moves them from where they are), so the nematodi towers do, proposing the same strategy but collectively.
The cores of nematodes are sensitive to tactile stimuli and can attach themselves to passing objects As animal vectors, or overcome stacking on each other fractures in fruit as a single worm would not be able to do.
When the scientists placed the nematod towers on Petri plates to facilitate their manipulation, they saw that these can create openings in fruit and that the worms can protect themselves up to Moscerini of the passing fruit and take flight with them.
In practice they can cooperate to save themselves from the scarcity of foodas other social bodies such as bees do, or ants.
Further observations in the laboratory have revealed that even adult nematodes, and not only those at the larval stadium, can form towers with the same purposes.
