He Dispersieus behavior enables organisms to find new resources in harder survival conditions; The collective dispersion in organisms that live in groups raises interesting questions about the selection of kinship, cooperation and social conflicts that offer an exciting window to the evolution of fun.
Kind Collective dispersion is when individuals physically unite their bodies in a super organism And they move like a group, but these phenomena are rare in nature and there are few empirical systems that make their mechanistic dissection possible.
Individuals of many nematode species can Group and self -assembly in a living tower of worms, which is raised as a collective dispersion structure. However, the direct proof that the performance and function of the towers in nature has so far has been scarce so far when its functionality and efficiency have been proven.
Worm towers
Loose Nematodos are a kind of round worms that can be grouped to create a coordinated structure in the form of a living tower that facilitates displacement. This behavior was observed in the laboratory, But it also occurs in nature, As documented a group of researchers.
«A nematode tower is not only many worms, “is” a coordinated structurea super organism on the move, “said Daniela Pérez of the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior (Germany), one of the study authors Current biology.
Nematodos are the most common animals on earth and when there is competition for the lack of food They go up on top of each other until their bodies forge a living tower that has been turned to heavenWhere they can hold on to an animal that passes in the direction of more green and spacious meadows.
Until now, these types of structures had only been observed in the laboratory, but now the team, also formed by the University of Constance (Germany) on video how The worms rise on the apples and pears of the local orchards. The team combined fieldwork with laboratory experiments to give the first direct test that the behavior is produced naturally and works as a means for collective transport.
Months of work with a digital microscope that observed decisive fruit in orchards close to the university, was allowed to capture the natural appearance and behavior of the towers of the towers worm Some of these towers were taken to the laboratory, Where they saw that they were only formed by nematodes of a kind and all in a larva phase that is known as ‘Dauer’.
Laboratory tests
The team noted that the natural towers of ‘Dauer’ moved at the same time, as the nematodes do when they get up on their tail to grab an animal that passes. In addition, They discovered that whole worms could respond to contactReleasing the surfaces and jointly adhering to insects, such as fruit flies, going to masses to new environments, the Max Planck Institute explained in a statement.
To investigate more thoroughly, the team created a controlled tower using laboratory crops of a kind of nematode El Elegans. In the absence of food and with a small vertical post, in that case a toothbrush sow, the Hungry worms started to assemble themselves. Living towers came forward in two hours, more than 12 hours stable and able to extend explorers to the surrounding space and even form bridges to reach new surfaces.
The towers detect and grow actively, «When we touch them, they responded immediately, growing to the stimulus and attach themselves to him“Pérez said. All adult elegans and all laboratory stadiums rose in Torre, so this behavior is not limited to the ‘Dauer’ phase that is observed in wild samples, which suggests that it can be a more generalized group movement strategy of what was believed. EFE / ECOTICIA.COM