Social Behavior of Earthworms in the Context of Their Use in Bioremediation

Patnaik, Pratiksha; Ghazala, Dilkesh; Abbasi, S. A.; Tabassum-Abbasi,; Abbasi, Tasneem

doi:10.1007/978-981-16-4400-9_1

Cited by 1 publication

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References 48 publications

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“…In nature, these collectives consist of organisms of diverse sizes, from single-cell organisms like bacteria, to insects and birds, to enormous animals such as whales, to reproduce, migrate, or survive (Parrish and Edelstein-Keshet 1999;Vicsek and Zafeiris 2012;Smith et al 2019). While many of these collectives consist of discretely separated individuals such as a bird in a flock, there are groups that form a physically entangled structure such as Caenorhabditis elegans (Ding et al 2019;Artyukhin et al 2015), earthworms (Patnaik et al 2022;Zirbes et al 2012), honeybees (Peleg et al 2018), fire ants (Wagner et al 2021;Hu et al 2016), daddy longlegs (Wagner et al 2021), and the freshwater-based oligochaete Lumbriculus variegatus (California blackworms) (Fig. 1a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxygenation-Controlled Collective Dynamics in Aquatic Worm Blobs

Tuazon

Kaufman

Goldman

et al. 2022

Integrative and Comparative Biology

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Many organisms utilize group aggregation as a method for survival. The freshwater oligochaete, Lumbriculus variegatus (California blackworms) form tightly entangled structures, or worm “blobs”, that have adapted to survive in extremely low levels of dissolved oxygen (DO). Individual blackworms adapt to hypoxic environments through respiration via their mucous body wall and posterior ciliated hindgut, which they wave above them. However, the change in collective behavior at different levels of DO is not known. Using a closed-loop respirometer with flow, we discover that the relative tail reaching activity flux in low DO is ∼75x higher than in the high-DO condition. Additionally, when flow rate is increased to suspend the worm blobs upward, we find that the average exposed surface area of a blob in low DO is ∼1.4x higher than in high DO. Furthermore, we observe emergent properties that arise when a worm blob is exposed to extreme DO levels. We demonstrate that internal mechanical stress is generated when worm blobs are exposed to high DO levels, allowing them to be physically lifted off from the bottom of a conical container using a serrated endpiece. Our results demonstrate how both collective behavior and the emergent generation of internal mechanical stress in worm blobs change to accommodate differing levels of oxygen. From an engineering perspective, this could be used to model and simulate swarm robots, self-assembly structures, or soft material entanglements.

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