(Phys.org)—Throughout her career, the famous biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) argued that the world of microorganisms has a much larger impact on the entire biosphere—the world of all living things—than scientists ...
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Plants & Animals
Mar 5, 2024
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Fossils of a new group of animal predators have been located in the Early Cambrian Sirius Passet fossil locality in North Greenland. These large worms may be some of the earliest carnivorous animals to have colonized the ...
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Ecology
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248
In a world full of bizarre animals, hairworms are some of the strangest. Hairworms are parasitic worms that manipulate the behavior of their hosts in what's sometimes called "mind control."
Evolution
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Research led by Sichuan University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, has revealed genetic mechanisms that could prolong healthy aging. In the paper, titled "Partial inhibition of class III PI3K VPS-34 ...
In nature, smaller animals often attach themselves to larger ones to "hitch a ride" and save energy migrating large distances. In paper published on June 21 in the journal Current Biology, researchers show how microscopic ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 21, 2023
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For millennia, humans have used knots for all kinds of reasons—to tie rope, braid hair, or weave fabrics. But there are organisms that are better at tying knots and far superior—and faster—at untangling them.
Molecular & Computational biology
Apr 27, 2023
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Cut off the head of a three-banded panther worm and another will take its place—mouth, brain, and all. Cut off its tail and it will grow another. Cut the worm in three separate pieces and within eight weeks there'll be ...
Biotechnology
Nov 8, 2021
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The term worm is used to describe many different distantly-related animals which have a long cylindrical body and no legs.
Most animals called "worms" are invertebrates, but the term is also used for the amphibian caecilians and the slow worm Anguis, a legless burrowing lizard. Invertebrate animals commonly called "worms" include annelids (earthworms), nematodes (roundworms), flatworms, marine polychaete worms (bristle worms), marine nemertean worm ("bootlace worms"), and insect larvae such as caterpillars, grubs, and maggots.
Worms vary in size from microscopic to over a metre in length for marine polychaete worms (bristle worms), 6.7 m (22 ft) for the African giant earthworm, Microchaetus rappi, and 55 m (180 ft) for the marine nemertean worm (bootlace worm), Lineus longissimus.
Historical English-speaking cultures have used the (now depreciated) terms worm, wurm, or wyrm to describe carnivorous reptiles ("serpents"), and the related mythical beasts dragons.
Various types of worm occupy a wide variety of parasitic niches, living inside the bodies of other animals. Free-living worm species may live on land, in marine or freshwater environments, or burrow.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
