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Not whale-fall specialists, Osedax worms also consume fishbones - PubMed

  • ️Sat Jan 01 2011

Not whale-fall specialists, Osedax worms also consume fishbones

Greg W Rouse et al. Biol Lett. 2011.

Abstract

Marine annelid worms of the genus Osedax exploit sunken vertebrate bones for food. To date, the named species occur on whale or other mammalian bones, and it is argued that Osedax is a whale-fall specialist. To assess whether extant Osedax species could obtain nutrition from non-mammalian resources, we deployed teleost bones and calcified shark cartilage at approximately 1000 m depth for five months. Although the evidence from shark cartilage was inconclusive, the teleost bones hosted three species of Osedax, each of which also lives off whalebones. This suggests that rather than being a whale-fall specialist, Osedax has exploited and continues to exploit a variety of food sources. The ability of Osedax to colonize and to grow on fishbone lends credibility to a hypothesis that it might have split from its siboglinid relatives to assume the bone-eating lifestyle during the Cretaceous, well before the origin of marine mammals.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.

(a) Cages prior to deployment; (1) ‘large’ teleost vertebrae (approx. 2 cm diameter centrum); (2) ‘small’ teleost vertebrae (approx. 5 mm diameter); (s) half a lower jaw and vertebrae (approx. 5 mm diameter) from a small Mako shark; and (c) sections of cow femur. (b) Two large teleost vertebrae from cage no. 1, with a mature female Osedax roseus specimen (GenBank JF509949). (c) Neural spine of large teleost vertebra from cage no. 2 with female Osedax ‘nude-palp-E’ (1,2) with sediment-covered tubes. Arrows indicate roots of specimen 1. Roots from specimen 2 can also be seen extending outward beneath the tube. (d) Large teleost vertebra in (b) occupied by O. roseus. (e) Same O. roseus with the veneer of bone overlying the root system dissected away to reveal her green roots. (f) Crown of the preserved female O. roseus with two spawned eggs (arrows). (g). Detail of root system shown in (e) with surrounding white dissolved bone matrix. (h) Junction of the trunk and crown of female O. roseus in (d). Arrows indicate two of four dwarf males found in her tube.

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References

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