One of the largest and prettiest #scaleworm I’ve ever found. There’s a term, “meroplankton” which describes organisms who will spend only part of their lives, or earlier life stages drifting by with the plankton. #blackwater #blackwaterdiving #polychaete #deepseacreatures

If you look at the @inaturalist.bsky.social world map of distribution Helobdella leeches are everywhere - except the too cold near-polar places. They are also good invaders - as obviously has occurred here. But behind the hype an interesting find nevertheless.

[New Paper] in Ecology @esajournals.bsky.social reports a remarkable limpet feeding exclusively on chitinous tubes of deep-sea tubeworms! Chitin may be key energy reserves in the deep. New species in the family Osteopeltidae previously only known from whale fall. OPEN ACCESS: doi.org/10.1002/ecy....

Malaysian Myzostoma livin' its best life! hangin with its feather star host! #wormwednesday #myzostomida www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Myzostoma! interesting texture on this one! #wormwednesday #myzostomida www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Very happy to have the final chapter of my PhD published, describing the first abyssal species of Myzostomid annelids! This new genus was found living ectocommensally on abyssal seastars across the Pacific Ocean doi.org/10.1071/IS25...

Crikey! And it's been sitting on YouTube for 13 years without a comment. Amazing! Myzostomids are very strange worms.

ha ha. late #WORMWEDNESDAY Swimming Scale Worm! from EX1706! I remember being there! youtu.be/Bi_3JQULCwM?...

Wonderful zooms on a large Tomopteris! A little less than a meter probably. @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 903 #DesigningtheFuture3 #MarineLife

GLOW WORMS IN LONG BEACH HOLY SHIT!!!

(4/10) Far below the Pacific Ocean, in a world without sunlight, something glitters: Iskra’s Glitter Worm. www.marinespecies.org/worms-top-te... @scrippsocean.bsky.social #toptenmarinespecies #taxonomistappreciationday #OceanDecade #GenOcean #deepsea

(2/10) The Sponge Ambusher Worm sets its trap in a glass sponge. www.marinespecies.org/worms-top-te... #toptenmarinespecies #taxonomistappreciationday #OceanDecade #GenOcean #deepsea

What do you get when you study deep sea annelids & sea sponges on the Getsuyo Seamount? A symbiotic relationship resulting in two newly-described species of Hesionid from two sister-clades! Inhabiting the same sponge host, they share a niche...suggesting convergent specialisation! 🧪

Impressive macrotubercles arrays

#amphipodstoday #wormwednesday

oh Wow! A male epitoke (reproductive stage) of this polychaete, Proceraea hanssoni! #wormwednesday www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Registration and Abstract Submissions for the 15th International Polychaete Conference is now open!! #IPC15 polychaete-association.com/ipc15-frankf...

Star-shaped worm colonies? ✨🪱 Our new paper describes 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘢𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘦𝘣𝘢𝘺𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘴, named after Mauritania’s Baie de l’Étoile (Bay of Stars). Open access & featured on the Feb cover of Ecology & Evolution. 🔗 doi.org/10.1002/ece3... #newspecies #polychaete #taxonomy @sgn.one @oceanspecies.bsky.social

The balloon worm looks nothing like a typical worm because it doesn’t live on the seafloor, it floats in the deep midwater. With a gelatinous, bag-like body for buoyancy, it drifts and feeds on sinking organic particles. www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5KG... #marinelife #wormwednesday

I am done screaming into the void today so here you go, have a whole loaf of scale worm. That thing is huge. From @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 784 #antarcticclimateconnections #MarineLife

#WormWednesday Hyalinoecia onuphids (quillworms) scavenging something organic

MOAR colorful NOTOPYGOS from Kwajalein Atoll! #wormwednesday www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Kwajalein has a lot of these! NOTOPYGOS! #wormwednesday and thanks to Scott Johnson for these great shots! www.inaturalist.org/observations...

New paper out on the impact from a deep sea mining test in the Pacific Ocean. Great collaboration with the Natural History Museum London and the National Oceanography Centre Southampton . www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#Crustmas and #wormwednesday!

One day we might learn what the "tubeworms" were that formed this convenient refuge for fish. They are identified only as a Lamellibrachia.

📢 The First Circular for the 15th International Polychaete Conference (IPC15) is out! Join us in Frankfurt, Germany • 27–31 July 2026 #IPC15 #Polychaetes #Annelida polychaete-association.com/ipc15-frankf...

Palola worms! is for EATIN'! #wormwednesday Indonesia www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Meet Spinther bohnorum n. sp. Tilic & Rouse 2025 ✨— a tiny but stunning worm! Spinther species are enigmatic worms that always seem to dwell on sponges, but we still don’t know exactly where they belong on the annelid tree of life. A shiny small mystery wrapped in glitter, basically. 😅🪱

Whoa indeed! What life form is that? #WormWednesday

SO MANY PATTERN! from India! Hesione ceylonica! #wormwednesday www.inaturalist.org/observations...

LONG ARM= genus Longibrachium! Wotta critter! Wotta set of prongs! #wormwednesday Indonesia www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Nightmare fuel for corals: The Bearded Fireworm 😱🔥🪱🪸 #beardedfireworm #fireworm #nightmarefuel #corallivore #coral #coralhead #coralcitycamera #miami #portmiami #biscaynebay #coralcity

Usually, when something or someone touches a Christmas tree worm's feathery radioles, it would immediately retract back into its hole. But not blennies and gobies - the worms consider those fishes as homies who are allowed to touch their radioles. #Invertebrate 🧪 link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Porcelain crabs are the icon of "fooled ya, not crab". But Eulenaios cometes goes further by living inside a worm tube! (Actually, several true and false crabs, and a second worm, are all up in these tubes wtf) 🦀🧪🦑 #InverteFest peerj.com/articles/2930/

Sad news that Dr Janet (Bradford) Grieve passed away on Saturday. She was a world expert in Copepods, a pioneering woman in biological oceanography in NZ and first women to lead a marine research voyage in nz with her first voyage in 1967. She was a role model, a mentor and a leader.

Wow. Scale worm? OP reads "Plankton fr the coast of Hitachinaka City, Ibaraki Prefecture. Body length 0.7mm. Perhaps a polychaete larva? It has a distinctive transparent disc-like structure, .. Its eyes are cute too." via @a1AgqW93RTKPUD9 #wormwednesday

Remember, the next Polychaete Conference #IPC15 is coming to Frankfurt in 2026! Make sure you save the dates - and in the meantime check out the website for the polychaete-association.com

What did bone worms eat before whales? Marine reptiles! www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...

Hey Star Trek nerds, FYI there's Gagh IRL, and they're called palolo. They're polychaete worms, or more specifically the detached, self-propelled reproductive bits of Palola viridis #Invertebrate 🧪 - www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10... - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palola_...

One of my favorites! by Alexander Semenov #worldpolychaeteday

My last echinoblog post on #worldpolychaeteday but it includes a retrospective from 3 years of posts and swimming polychaete love! echinoblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/poly...

A reminder that there are in the neighborhood of 90-100? species of Eunice! so there's MOAR than E. aphroditois (aka the Sand Striker or the Bobbit worm) a LOT more! Here's Eunice macrobranchia from Pacific Mexico.. its PURPLE! #worldpolychaeteday www.inaturalist.org/observations...

Sand Mason worm from Ireland! (Lanice conchilega) #worldpolychaeteday www.inaturalist.org/observations...

It's #InternationalPolychaeteDay, and we've got something for you to celebrate. ❤️ Flame on: The vibrant red gossamer worm is the race car of the deep sea: youtu.be/PII8AvmEvnE?...

I never shared this video of the nereid worm I saw last year because we didn't have video here then, but now you can see this fabulous worm in action for #InternationalPolychaeteDay!

33 years of NIWA - national institute of water and Atmospheric research, Aotearoa/New Zealand ended today - renamed and reformed with the formation of the new Earth Science institute. Here is a video of some of the archive footage- lots of familiar faces from the 12.5 years that I worked there.

#WormWednesday Review of extensive genome-wide scrambling in clitellate annelids genomes doi.org/10.1038/s415... Unfortunately #closedaccess

Deadly algal bloom in South Australia’s Coorong an environmental ‘eye opener’, ecologist says #Climate

For #FossilFriday meet a fossil worm. Kenostrychus is a bristle worm that lived 425 million years ago, and was preserved in three dimensions in volcanic ash. What you see below is a 3D reconstruction created by grinding it away, photographing it, and creating a 3D computer model. ⚒️🧪🦀🦑 #evosky