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Information about Osedax

Osedax
Scientific classification
Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Annelida
Class:Polychaeta
Order:Sabellida
Family:Siboglinidae
Genus:Osedax
Rouse et al., 2004
Species


Osedax frankpressi
Osedax rubiplumus
Osedax mucofloris
Osedax is a genus of deep-sea siboglinid polychaetes, commonly called zombie or bone-eating worms, first discovered in Monterey Bay, California, in February 2002. The worms were found living in a decaying gray whale in the Monterey Canyon, at a depth of 2,800 m (9,100 feet) using the submarine ROV Tiburon. They have no stomachs or mouths and digest whale fat and oils through bacteria. They have colorful feathery plumes that act as gills, and unusual root-like structures that absorb their nutrition. Between 50 and 100 microscopic dwarf males live inside the females. Although the males never develop past their larval stage, they contain large numbers of sperm.

Osedax is Latin for "bone-eating", alluding to how they bore into the bones of whale carcasses to reach the lipids that they feed on, which are contained within the bones.

In late 2005, an experiment by Swedish marine biologists resulted in the discovery of a species of the worm in the North Sea off the west coast of Sweden. In the experiment, a minke whale carcass that had been washed ashore had been sunk to a depth of 120 m and monitored for several months. Biologists were surprised to find that unlike the previous discoveries, the new species, colloquially known as "bone eating snot flower" after its scientific name (Osedax mucofloris - a more accurate translation would be "slimeflower bone-eater"), lived in very shallow waters compared to the previous discoveries.

Craig Smith, a researcher in Hawaii, suggests that about half of Osedax species died out when 90% of the whale population was depleted by hunting at the end of the 19th century.[1]

References

  • G. W. Rouse, S. K. Goffredi, and R. C. Vrijenhoek (2004). "Osedax: Bone-Eating Marine Worms with Dwarf Males". Science 305: 668–671. 

See Also

External links

Scientific classification or biological classification is a method by which biologists group and categorize species of organisms. Scientific classification also can be called scientific taxonomy, but should be distinguished from folk taxonomy, which lacks scientific basis.
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Annelida
Lamarck, 1809

Classes and subclasses

Class Polychaeta (paraphyletic?)
Class Clitellata*
   Oligochaeta - earthworms, etc.
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Polychaeta
Grube, 1850

Subclasses
Palpata
Scolecida

The Polychaeta or polychaetes are a class of annelid worms, generally marine.
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Sabellida

Families
  • Oweniidae
  • Sabellariidae
  • Sabellidae
  • Serpulidae
  • Siboglinidae
  • Spirorbidae


Sabellida is a suborder of the class Polychaeta. Filter feeders with no buccal organ.
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Siboglinidae
Caullery, 1914

Genera

Birsteinia
Choanophorus
Cyclobrachia
Lamellibrachia
Lamellisabella
Osedax
Paraescarpia
Ridgeia
Riftia

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species is one of the basic units of biological classification. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring.
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genus (plural: genera) is part of the Latinized name for an organism. It is a name which reflects the classification of the organism by grouping it with other closely similar organisms.
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Siboglinidae
Caullery, 1914

Genera

Birsteinia
Choanophorus
Cyclobrachia
Lamellibrachia
Lamellisabella
Osedax
Paraescarpia
Ridgeia
Riftia

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Polychaeta
Grube, 1850

Subclasses
Palpata
Scolecida

The Polychaeta or polychaetes are a class of annelid worms, generally marine.
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Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean, on the coast of California, south of San Francisco. The roughly semicircular bay is ringed by a segment of California State Route 1 which connects Santa Cruz at the north end to Monterey at the south end.
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20th century - 21st century - 22nd century
1970s  1980s  1990s  - 2000s -  2010s  2020s  2030s
1999 2000 2001 - 2002 - 2003 2004 2005

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Eschrichtiidae
Ellerman & Morrison-Scott, 1951

Genus: Eschrichtius

Species: E.
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Monterey Canyon is a submarine canyon in Monterey Bay, California often studied by the scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.

Monterey Canyon begins at Moss Landing, California (long. = -121.79; lat. = 36.
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In anatomy, the stomach is a bean-shaped hollow muscular organ of the gastrointestinal tract involved in the second phase of digestion, following mastication. The word stomach is derived from the Latin stomachus, which derives from the Greek word
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mouth, also known as the buccal cavity or the oral cavity, is the orifice through which an organism takes in food and water.

Location

In all mammals, the mouth is forward-facing in the face. Non-mammals have mouths in other locations (e.g.
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whale can refer to all cetaceans, to just the larger ones, or only to members of particular families within the order Cetacea. The last definition is the one followed here. Whales are those cetaceans which are neither dolphins (i.e.
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Fat

Fat may refer to:
  • Fat, a group of compounds that are generally soluble in organic solvents and largely insoluble in water
  • Adipose tissue, an anatomical term for loose connective tissue composed of adipocytes

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The acronym OIL can refer to:
  • Output Input Language
  • Office of Infrastructure and Logistics - Luxembourg
  • Ontology Inference Layer or Ontology Interchange Language, an Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web.
  • Oil India Limited.

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Bacteria

Phyla

Actinobacteria
Aquificae
Chlamydiae
Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi
Chloroflexi
Chrysiogenetes
Cyanobacteria
Deferribacteres
Deinococcus-Thermus
Dictyoglomi
Fibrobacteres/Acidobacteria
Firmicutes
Fusobacteria
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Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds. They are the outstanding characteristic that distinguishes the Class Aves from all other living groups. Other Theropoda also had feathers (see Feathered dinosaurs).
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A gill is a respiration organ that functions for the extraction of oxygen from water and the excretion of carbon dioxide. Unlike many small aquatic animals, which can absorb oxygen through the entire surface of their bodies, more complex aquatic organisms have gills specially
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ROOT is an object-oriented software package developed by CERN. It was originally designed for particle physics data analysis and contains several features specific to this field, but it is also commonly used in other applications such as astronomy and data mining.
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Nutrition is a science that examines the relationship between diet and health. Dietitians are health professionals who specialize in this area of study, and are trained to provide safe, evidence-based dietary advice and interventions.
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Male (♂) refers to the sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilisation.
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Female (♀) is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces ova (egg cells). The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon is produced by the male.
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larva (Latin; plural larvae) is a juvenile form of animal with indirect development, undergoing metamorphosis (for example, insects or amphibians).

The larva can look completely different from the adult form, for example, a caterpillar differs from a butterfly.
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sperm is derived from the word spermos (meaning "seed") and refers to the male reproductive cells. Sperm cells are the smaller gametes involved in fertilization.
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Latin}}} 
Official status
Official language of: Vatican City
Used for official purposes, but not spoken in everyday speech
Regulated by: Opus Fundatum Latinitas
Roman Catholic Church
Language codes
ISO 639-1: la
ISO 639-2: lat
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