More strange sea creatures from Monterey Bay

Francis Crick has died, I learned today. His achievements will ensure that his memory lives on. But is it not fitting that, as a man who did so much to unlock the secrets of life for us takes his leave, a new and wonderful living thing enters our world?

Well; the bizarre marine worms of the genus Osedax are not really new, though as AP reports they are new to our knowledge. Like the four-armed jellyfish Stellamedusa ventana, they have been found in the waters of Monterey Bay off California.

This is Osedax frankpressi. Like her cousins O. rubiplumus she lives on the skeletons of dead whales at the ocean floor. She lacks a stomach, but that's all right because she harbours bacteria within her that digest fats from the whale bones. She's a few cm long but her husbands--of whom she may have hundreds--are much smaller and live inside her, reduced to little more than sperm factories for her eggs.

DNA analysis suggests that Osedax number among the Siboglinidae, related to those worms--whose pictures we've all seen--that live in the unbelievably hot and sulphurous waters round hydrothermal vents. Like Osedax, the vent worms have harnassed bacteria for a living, albeit in a very different way.

A big tip o' the T6I tam-o-shanter to GW Rouse, SK Goffredi and RC Vrijenhoek for bringing Osedax to the world's attention. You'll find the abstract of their paper in Science here, though I'm afraid you'll need to register to see even that, and pay lots of money to read the paper itself. Or, you can stroll on down to the library with the citation in hand:

Osedax: Bone-Eating Marine Worms with Dwarf Males
G. W. Rouse et al.
Science, Vol 305, Issue 5684, 668-671 , 30 July 2004

Happy reading!