The worm re-turns: hiding behavior of a tube-dwelling marine polychaete, Serpula vermicularis

Halogenated veneers: protein cross-linking and halogenation in the jaws of nereis, a marine polychaete worm.

Mineralized tissues are produced by most living organisms for load and impact functions. In contrast, the jaws of the clam worm, Nereis, are hard without mineralization. However, they are peculiarly rich in halogens, which are associated with a variety of post-translationally modified amino acids, many of which are multiply halogenated by chlorine, bromine, and/or iodine. Several of these modif...

Settlement of a marine tube worm as a function of current velocity: Interacting effects of hydrodynamics and behavior I

Settlement cxpcriments were conducted with larvae of Phragmatopoma lapidosa callfirnica (a reefbuilding sabcllariid polychaetc) in turbulent flume flows (near-surface velocities of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, and 35 cm s-l) over a hydrodynamically smooth bed. Boundary shear velocities spanned the critical shear velocity for initiation of particle motion and for suspended-load transport of passive la...

Lectins with anti-HIV activity: a review.

Lectins including flowering plant lectins, algal lectins, cyanobacterial lectins, actinomycete lectin, worm lectins, and the nonpeptidic lectin mimics pradimicins and benanomicins, exhibit anti-HIV activity. The anti-HIV plant lectins include Artocarpus heterophyllus (jacalin) lectin, concanavalin A, Galanthus nivalis (snowdrop) agglutinin-related lectins, Musa acuminata (banana) lectin, Myrian...

Sneaky snails and wasted worms: kleptoparasitism by Trichotropis cancellata (Mollusca, Gastropoda) on Serpula columbiana (Annelida, Polychaeta)

Individuals of the marine snail Trichotropis cancellata can either suspension feed or steal food from tube-dwelling polychaete worm hosts (kleptoparasitism). Because kleptoparasitism is facultative in this case, the performance of both members can be evaluated separately and together. I used field experiments to compare the growth of suspension feeding snails with that of snails (either singly ...

The worm turns on Helicobacter pylori.