Living worm towers are recorded in the wild for the first time, a rare example of collective hitchhiking in nature.
Living worm towers are recorded in the wild for the first time, a rare example of collective hitchhiking in nature.
Nematodes are the most abundant animal on earth, but when times get tough, these tiny worms have a hard time moving up and out. So, they play to the strength of their clade. If food runs out and competition turns fierce, they slither towards their numerous kin. They climb onto each other and over one another until their bodies forge a living tower that twists skyward where they might hitch a ride on a passing animal to greener and roomier pastures.
At least that’s what scientists assumed. For decades, these worm structures were more mythical than material. Such aggregations, in which animals link bodies for group movement, are rare in nature. Only slime molds, fire ants, and spider mites are known to move in this way. For nematodes, nobody had even seen the aggregations—known as towers— forming anywhere but within the artificial confines of laboratories and growth chambers; and nobody really knew what they were for. Did towers even exist in the real world?
Read more at Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
