Peacock worm

Peacock feather worm ( Sabella pavonina )

The peacock feather worm ( Sabella pavonina ) is a species of the family of the spring worms ( Sabellidae ), who lives sessile in tubes on the ocean floor.

Features

If these worms stretch their spring-like tentacles from its tube, similar to the more radschlagenden a peacock as a worm. This characteristic also led to the epithet pavonina by the scientific name for the peacock Pavo. The spring ring is made up of two parts, the many filaments are on each side generally in approximately equal split. The number of the filaments is between 25 and 50 on each side. With the variety Sabella pavonina var bicoronata the two parts of the crown of tentacles, however, are designed to be very different. A copy can have for example on one side 41 on the other 83 filaments here.

The peacock feather worm can be 25 to 50 inches inches long, but usually it projects only a 10 -centimeter-long part of the tube from the bottom. The worm is very thin and usually reaches less than an inch in diameter. Like all members of worms is the elongated body from many similarly constructed segments, the peacock feather worm they can reach a number of 100 to 600. The parchment -like tube is an excretion product of the skin of the peacock feather worm.

Occurrence and habitat

The peacock feather worm is found in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Mediterranean.

He lives in the mud or sand of the sea bottom ( benthic zone ) in a rising from the bottom tube from the upper opening the delicate tentacles stretched out in order to filter food particles from the water. If the tentacle touched or a shadow falls on the animals immediately pull back into the tube. It can only change its location when he leaves this.