Tag: Annelida

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The Sound of a Worm by Kelly Westhoff

in this noisy world
robins tune out everything
and listen for worms

by Kelly Westhoff

Robins can often be seen hopping around the grassy lawns of parks and homes hunting for earthworms. But worms live underground, so how do robins know where they are? Robins can hear them! Well, not exactly. Worms don’t make noise, but their movements underground do stir up soil and roots and leaves, and that’s what robins can hear.

If you watch a robin hunt, you’ll likely notice that it will often pause and cock its head. Researchers think this is when a robin is “listening” for worms. In the past, scientists thought robins could see grass shift as a worm passed underneath and that this was how they found their prey.

However, in the 1990s, scientists captured some robins and created a variety of scenarios, like hiding worms deep in dirt under a layer of cardboard and playing loud music while robins hunted. The robins had the hardest time finding worms when their hearing was compromised, leading the scientists to believe the birds rely on their ears more than their eyes while seeking worms. When the study was done, all the robins were released back into the wild.

Further reading:

‘How Do American Robins Find Worms? Behold the Rich Sensory World of Birds’, 2026, McGlashen, A., Audubon Magazine, available: https://www.audubon.org/magazine/how-do-american-robins-find-worms-behold-rich-sensory-world-of-birds

Author bio:

Kelly Westhoff loves fitting words into the 5-7-5 format of traditional haiku. For her, haiku is a practice in mindfulness. She enjoys discovering parallels between her life and nature. She lives in Minnesota where the ever-changing seasons are a constantly-renewing source of inspiration. Find more of her haiku on Instagram @KellyWesthoffWrites.

Read more sciku by Kelly: ‘Your Roots’ and ‘Squishy’.

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Volcanoes Transforming Dark Depths by Douglas J. Lanzo

plate tectonics
plumes of fire, sulfur and ash
erupting undersea

by Douglas J. Lanzo

Magma erupts through ocean floors from the earth’s mantle when oceanic plates collide with, or tear away from, each other, with staggering force.  This results in spectacular undersea volcanic activity that forges massive sea mounts from plumes of magma that thrust toward the ocean’s surface with incredible heat, speed and fury.  Yellow-orange magma turns red and then further glassy black as it cools so quickly that crystals do not have time to form, spewing plumes of sulfur and billowing ash into surrounding waters. 

While this activity brings death to some sea creatures, others thrive off of it, with aptly named Pompeii worms, vent shrimp, yeti crabs and giant tube worms thriving off the bacteria and superheated minerals found in abundance by these smoking-hot hydrothermal vents.

This activity is on such a massive scale that over time it can produce entire volcanic island chains, such as the Hawaiian Islands.  Even when a sea mount does not become a “Mauna Kea” and pierce the ocean’s surface, it can rise for thousands of meters and form one of the highest mountains on earth.  Just for the record, Hawaii’s now dormant volcano, Mauna Kea is over 10,000 meters in height when measured from its base on the Pacific Ocean’s floor, which dwarfs Mount Everest’s mere 8,849-meter height.

Further reading:

To learn more about this awe-inspiring undersea tectonic activity, I highly recommend the breathtaking 2017 BBC Blue Planet II (2017) Episode 2 “The Deep” documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough and the 2006 BBC Planet Earth Episode 11 “Ocean Deep”. 

For some good reading on it, check out the Underwater Volcanoes webpage published by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution under its Ocean Learning Hub at https://www.whoi.edu/ocean-learning-hub/ocean-topics/how-the-ocean-works/seafloor-below/volcanoes/.

Author bio:

Doug is an award-winning American author and poet of over 560 internationally published poems whose debut novel The Year of the Bear won the Ames Award for YA Books and whose second book I Have Lived was named American Book Fest Novella of the Year. His Author’s website is www.douglaslanzo.com.

Check out other sciku by Doug here.

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Banding together by Kathy Gillen

Entangled worm blob
Seeking connection with mates
Much like a mosh pit

by Kathy Gillen

In laboratory culture conditions California blackworms huddle together, but why? California blackworms (Lumbriculus variegatus) are widely distributed freshwater annelids that are easy to care for in the lab (1). In the wild these detritivores stick their heads into the muck at the edges of ponds and rivers while their tails extend through the water column for gas exchange. In lab culture consisting of worms in bowls of artificial freshwater, the worms form tangled masses that with a touch from a pipette wriggle apart. This behavior fascinates students and students frequently ask why the worms form knotted blobs.

One explanation for the worm blobs is that lacking a substrate such as mud to stick their heads into, the worms instead burrow into each other. Whether or not this is correct, in worms, as in other animals, aggregating provides benefits. Researchers manipulated blob sizes and found that larger blobs help more worms survive thermal stress in a temperature gradient experiment. And blobs of worms better withstand desiccation stress (2). Additionally the physics of the entangled masses themselves are being examined, research that may pave the way for bioinspired materials with useful new properties (3,4). Long used as model organisms in whole body regeneration and in environmental toxicology studies, the California blackworm continues to provide new research avenues.

Further reading:

  1. ‘It Cuts Both Ways: An Annelid Model System for the Study of Regeneration in the Laboratory and in the Classroom’, 2021, Martinez Acosta, V.G., Arellano-Carbajal, F., Gillen, K., Tweeten, K.A., Zattara, E.E. Front Cell Dev Biol 9, 780422. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2021.780422
  2. ‘Collective dynamics in entangled worm and robot blobs’, 2021, Ozkan-Aydin, Y., Goldman, D.I., Bhamla, M.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, e2010542118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2010542118
  3. ‘Following the entangled state of filaments’, 2023, Panagiotou, E. Science 380, 340–341. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adh4055
  4. ‘Ultrafast reversible self-assembly of living tangled matter’, 2023, Patil, V.P., Tuazon, H., Kaufman, E., Chakrabortty, T., Qin, D., Dunkel, J., Bhamla, M.S. Science 380, 392–398. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade7759

Author bio:

Kathy Gillen teaches and conducts research at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Her Kenyon profile can be found here: https://www.kenyon.edu/directory/kathy-gillen/