https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jgyw
What do you do when the food is running and you are a small, millimeter long worm? Answer, it has been done, joined thousands of your colleagues to make a tent like superorgism that the larger animals can give you more to bring the extra way.
Biologists who study Nematode Worms In the labs that have long known that sometimes they make “towers”, but they haven’t studied in detail, as Serena Ding To the Max Planck Institute of animal behavior in Germany. So, he and his companions do that.
The team knows that worms are like widely studied Caenorabditis Elegans The towers are likely to form if there are many numbers of these, a lack of food and some kind of structure for them to gather – in these experiments, a toothbrush bristle.
Caterpillars sometimes make towers without any physical support, but these structures are not longer than 5 millimeters and lasted for a minute. In a brution as a foundation, the towers reach 11 mm high and lasted up to half a day.
To other types of nematodes, there are reports of towers up to 50 mm high. “They can grow greater,” Ding said.
While the basis of a tower continues, the other end can exceed the support structure and roam like a tent. For example, a tower can be expanded on a nearby surface and be a bridge, allowing worms to move gaps more than any individual largest manageable.
A “tower” in the nematode worm that grows in a rotting apple
Perez et al. Current Biology (2025)
The towers also took things to touch them, like the legs of fruit fly, resulting in part or all each tower taken. In this way, worms can get a free ride in other places.
Already known that Individual Nematode Worms Hitch Ser of Insectsbut not yet shown that the whole towers can do it. “That is the supposed function we can confirm,” Ding said.
With the help of digital microscopes, the team also records the tures of decay of apples in a garden near the institute – the first time observed behavior.
The worm tower is often formed by a species even if there are many different species, the team is found, and they can consist of worms in any active stage of their life in life. It was previously thought that the towers were only made of “Dauer” worms – a strong picture period forming if conditions were scary.
There are some similar superorganism. For example, Slime molds are organisms like lonely organisms that can gather to form larger bodies that works in search of food.
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