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Project Noah Nature School
Terebellidae g. sp.
Terebellidae is a family of polychaete worms. They are surface deposit feeders, catching falling particles with numerous elongate prostomial tentacles splayed out on the sea floor. These tentacles, which are the most or only normally visible portion of the animal and are reminiscent of spaghetti, inspired the common name spaghetti worms. The remainder of the animal is in a semi-permanent burrow or permanent tube in soft substrates. Most terebellids live in burrows or crevices and are often of large size, ranging up to 150 millimetres in length and 15 millimetres in width. The numerous, very long tentacles which radiate from near the mouth are used for finding and collecting food particles from the sediment surface. The tentacles are not retractable as is the case in the ampharetids. They have plump anterior bodies and numerous segments in their long, tapered posterior bodies, whereas ampharetids are more compact. They have branched gills laterally on up to three anterior chaetigers but in the subfamily Thelepodinae the gills are numerous simple filaments. The mid-body chaetigers are in double rows in the subfamily Amphitritinae. In the subfamily Polycirrinae, the gills are absent and the prostomium is expanded as an undulating membrane which bears the tentacles.[1]
This creature was found in/encrusted to a whelk shell that was collected during a sampling of sea grass beds off of Marathon Key. The photos were taken in a wet lab. Over the course of its stay in the wet lab, before we released it, it had managed to collect enough debris to create a new "tube home"
Spotted on Jan 6, 2005
Submitted on Nov 18, 2011
28 Comments (1–25)
Thanks Hema! Thanks for browsing my images! I should really upload more.
I remember this one!! You have interesting stuff!!
Thanks guys!
Superb !
Absolutely stunning spotting of a spectacular organism! Fantastic!!
spectacular!
Spectacular!!!
Thank you so much for the honor of being your first comment CourtneyLower, and what a great comment!
CourtneyLower, I'm looking forward to your photos. Coming soon to Project Noah?
I absolutely adore this critter. We found 3 of these in about the same location in 1990 and took them home with us. We were actually doing marine biomechanical research on the use of their tentacle and these guys' cute dots were wonderful to help gauge speed. We called them artacama or somethings like that. After doing a lot of research and deciding that we needed a proper taxonomic ID before publishing we sent one guy off to the polychaete taxonomist. Eventually we got the report from the taxonomist and it ended with something like ".... this species keys out to be blah blah blah, however I do not think it is." Welcome to the land of the unknown. Anyways, I would love to know the species name if the guy gets one.
Also FYI we packed our critters in salt water and supplemental oxygen and mailed them to Maine. The arrived before we did, but a lab tech when we returned said something like "Wow, it was amazing to see them swim". Huh? As she described it they reportedly had their tentacles curled in and somehow could synchronize them to swim around. Reportedly this lasted a couple hours and then they went to laying around and building tubes.
Anyways, this is my favorite species whatever it is. Thanks so much for the pics.
Thank you so much. :)
Excellent presented series
Lovely series, foto, and information! Great spotting!
Thanks Ava. :)
This is beautiful!
I will now add more photos that I took.
WOW!..cool! : )
very interesting species!
I should add a description...
Cool!
thats wild
Oh, and the size of the worm is about 2" from gills to tail so macro was not necessary.
This photo was taken in a wet lab after the class I was with went out on a boat trip to collect some critters to identify. This worm is a flow through aquarium.
teenie tiny though is this a macro?
Wow we have this in my aquarium!!