Well, it's that time of year again, time to renew the web hosting. And for those of you that don't know, that has become a lot more expensive than it used to be. Fifty dollars a year is now several hundred. Not to mention the price of domain names has gone up ten-fold.
And I just found out that the nice folks at PayPal disabled all my Support buttons, and I never got a notice (although that may be my fault.) In any case, it is all working again now, so if you would like to make a small donation to help defray these costs, it would be greatly appreciated.
Tube worms live with their bodies buried in tubes that they construct in the soft bottom substrate. Fan Worms ( Sabella spp. and others, 1/8" to 8", right ) are among the most popular sights on tropical coral reefs. Few people realize that they are present in temperate waters as well.
Fan Worms, or "Featherdusters", have a frill of tentacles on the head with which they feed on plankton, and occasionally larger items. Food particles are trapped in sticky mucous and carried down into the mouth. Some Fan Worms have eyespots along the tentacles.
Despite appearances, Fan Worms are not related to any of the other tentacled creatures on this page but are actually polychaetes, related to clam worms.
Myxicola infundibulum or something similar - note how the tentacles are joined almost to the ends, with no eyespots.Fan Worms are extremely sensitive, and withdraw into their tubes at the slightest disturbance, leaving behind a ball of mucous.The head of a terebellid worm on a subtidal mudflat in the Shark River. These are tube worms with long tentacles that spread out over the bottom. Cilia on the tentacles carry microscopic bits of food to the mouth ( see below. ) These worms do not sting like anemones.Tubeworm anatomyTube worm burrows in the side of a freshly dug hole. The dark color of the sediment indicates anoxic ( no oxygen ) conditions, which is normal in this sort of muddy bottom.
This worm-like creature is actually a bivalve mollusk with a greatly reduced shell, which it uses to bore tunnels into wood. They typically spend their entire lives in a tunnel in a single piece of wood. In addition to feeding off the wood, they can also filter feed like ordinary bivalves.
In the age of wooden ships, teredos and other wood-borers were a tremendous problem. In our area, more wood-boring is done by crustaceans than Teredos.
