Bone-Eating Worms Spread: Insights into Shallow-Water Osedax (Annelida, Siboglinidae) from Antarctic, Subantarctic, and Mediterranean Waters.

ABSTRACT: Osedax, commonly known as bone-eating worms, are unusual marine annelids belonging to Siboglinidae and represent a remarkable example of evolutionary adaptation to a specialized habitat, namely sunken vertebrate bones. Usually, females of these animals live anchored inside bone owing to a ramified root system from an ovisac, and obtain nutrition via symbiosis with Oceanospirillales gamma-proteobacteria. Since their discovery, 26 Osedax operational taxonomic units (OTUs) have been reported from a wide bathymetric range in the Pacific, the North Atlantic, and the Southern Ocean. Using experimentally deployed and naturally occurring bones we report here the presence of Osedax deceptionensis at very shallow-waters in Deception Island (type locality; Antarctica) and at moderate depths near Sout

SUBMITTER: Taboada S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4651350 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature