---

ANNELID WORM BIODIVERSITY RESOURCES: LINKS = FIELD TRIPS

These "field trips" link your computer to annelid-related information and people-links from around the world. See also the biographies and in memoriam pages.

There are hundreds of web pages on the Net that happen to mention various annelids and polychaetes, yet comparatively few of significant information content. On Field-trips page the links are under the headings of:

| Polychaete places | Wormlabs | Worms somewhere | Museum collections | Oligochaetes and Leeches | Worms of Vent, Seep, Whale bone, and Gas Hydrate | Online bibliographies | Worms that aren't annelids |

See also:

• Polychaetologist home pages.
• Other 'worm-researcher' home pages.

Random Field trips to Polychaete places
• Hunt for Polychaetes on USENET.
• Woods Hole MBL used to have easy to find pages on various polychaetes. Sigh! They're gone. Now it's endless menus and search forms, and subsequently the host name for parts of the site has changed from the obvious www.mbl.edu. Thanks guys! But they have some valuable information. Try their animals database, MBL Marine Species Index, and their site map. Some online documents follow (well maybe):
  • Egg compendium annelids. Egg characteristics and the breeding of Woods Hole polychaetes based on Costello and Henley "Methods For Obtaining And Handling Marine Eggs And Embryos"(1971).
  • Chaetopterus - Oocyte Maturation, Early Development, and Regeneration. William Eckberg and Susan Hill (1996) online paper at MBL.
  • Pectinaria - Oocyte Maturation, Spawning and Early Egg Development. Kenyon S. Tweedell (1996) online paper at MBL.
  • Laboratory culture of the larvae of spionidan polychaetes. Steven Q. Irvine and Mark Q. Martindale Mar. Mod. Elec. Rec. [serial online] article on culture of larvae of Chaetopterus sp and Polydora cornuta.
• Sabella spallanzanii in Western Australia: by G. Clapin, D. Evans (precis).
• Biochemical genetics of Sabella spallanzanii by R.D. Ward and J. Andrew (precis).
• Introduction to Le système Expert NEREIS constructed by Narendra Jussien, <Narendra.Jussien@emn.fr>, and a demonstration.
• Bristleworm Factsheet and Mini- FAQ v0.92 by Mike Noreen. Aquaria worms help information.
• Hypania invalida, a Caspian freshwater polychaete now in the Rhine.
• DELTA treatment of polychaetes from southern Australia. Robin Wilson's project to produce interactive identification tools for southern Australian polychaetes.
• Polychaeta project, NHM, London. See also under the title, Taxonomic information across the internet. "Contains keys and a browser to the common polychaete families, which people may find useful, as well as project based information."
• Fossil polychaete Canadia spinosa at the Smithsonian Institution Burgess Shale fossil sampler.
• Guide to Singapore polychaetes by Lim Yun Ping.
• The abalone sabellid. SEM's of the shell-deforming pest (was introduced into California) at Kevin Ruck's Abnet in South Africa.
• Letter about the abalone sabellid by A. Cohen. There has since been a claim it has been eradicated in California by removing many thousands of host gastropods - news story here, and here, mention Armand Kuris & Carrie Culver (U. Calif. press release here). The species is Terebrasabella heterouncinata Fitzhugh & Rouse, 1999 (Invertebrate Biology 118:357-390).
• Columbus sees the light. Cristoforo Colombo e l'Odontosyllis and Columbus: The Light of 11 October, 1492. Two links found by Leslie Harris, LACM, both referring to the possibility (unlikely according to one) that the mysterious light seen by C. Columbus the night prior to reaching America was from an Odontosyllis swarm. The photo at the Italian site appears to be an Alciopid however!
• Polychaete Research is a journal of the Polychaete Society. Chris Mettam is editor.
• Marenzelleria viridis among new species in the gulf of finland and gulf of Bothnia. - Ari Laine.
• Iberian polychaetes. A list of species and figures from the research of Dr Daniel Martin. A link off Daniel's excellent home page.
• Symbiotic polychaetes. Download PDFs of Daniel Martin & Temir Britayev's 1998 review article.
• Taxonomic Atlas Southern California polychaete volumes. Link to previews of the important Santa Barbara Museum series on offshore benthos.
• Cincinnati scolecodonts. Good page on these fossils of polychaete jaws.
• Larval photos including spionids by Wim van Egmond, at Microscopy-UK.
• Platynereis dumerilii mitochondrion, complete genome. NC_000931 accession at NCBI. Data by Boore & Brown.
• Use the Taxonomy browser at NCBI to find sequences and other molecular information on Polychaetes and other Annelids.
• Serpula vermicularis reefs, Loch Creran (Colin Moore page).
• Mesnil, Caullery, and the discovery of Haplosporidia. Mark Siddall's account of the first discovery of these parasitic protists in a polychaete.
• Hox genes. Explanatory article at "The Interactive Fly" that has discussion of Hox in Chaetopterus.
• OhMiGod, it's the Bobbit worm. (Image of lurking Eunice sp. ). It's also (a better photo) on the cover of Polychaetes & Allies Fauna of Australia book.
• Polychaetes in the Underwater Field Guide to Ross Island & McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. There's also the "polychaete sponge", Isodictya erinacea, which looks like a group of worms.
• Seabait Ltd and Nereis virens aquaculture. Press release from development funding organisation mentions cryopreservation of worm larvae.
• Shell-boring Polychaetes of Oysters, and of Scallops, and of Abalone (including the sabellid), and of Mussels. Fisheries & Oceans Canada site (1997. These may not be part of their current set of pages).

• More people links, and interesting polychaete items as they are announced. Thanks!

Wormlabs!
• Hawaii Wormlab home page.
• Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen (ZMUC)
• Tjärnö Marine Biological Laboratory
• Polychaetenzentrum Mainz. Gunter Geier et al.
• Nereis virens sex group at U. Mainz - Prof. Dr. A. Fischer et al.
• Senckenberg Zentrum für Biodiversitätsforschung, Frankfurt, Sektion Marine Evertebraten II (Dieter Fiege and Polychaeta).
• Centros de Estudos do Mar, Parana, Brazil.
• University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Dept Marine Sciences, Dove Marine Lab. and Seabait Ltd.
• Roscoff Ecophysiologie.
• Zoologisches Institut und Zoologisches Museum, Hamburg. Has a large polychaete type collection. Dr Gesa Hartmann-Schröder has retired.

Worms are in there somewhere!
• Worms in Literature. The word 'worm' that is. At Bargmann lab, U. Calif. (They work on the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, not annelids.)
• A Chronology of Significant Historical Developments in the Biological Sciences. 166 K list of dates, people, and events. Worms rarely feature! But it's an interesting resource.
• Southern California Association of Marine Invertebrate Taxonomists (SCAMIT). Several members are active in Polychaete Research & some interesting newsletters are online. URL http://www.scamit.org/ replaces previous URL (http://www.sccwrp.org/scamit/). Includes species list from monitoring programs in the Southern California Bight, and polychaete voucher sheets.
• International Assoc. of Meiobenthologists.
• CRIMP's links to international alien species issues, also the Port Phillip Bay invasive species report.
• Non-indigenous annelids. At the Nonindigenous Aquatic Species (NAS) information resource for the United States Geological Survey.
• Biosedimentology unit (some worm papers of P. Meadows)
• Rob Toonen's home breeders FAQ for marine invertebrates. Rob Toonen has worked on larval polychaetes, and provides an excellent resource for larval-rearing information. He also has a Reefkeepers introductory article on polychaetes at Aquarium.net.
• Zölder & Palzer & Marenzelleria larva. An application of image processing.
• IOS Plankton production - brief item with a Tomopteris fig.
• Science of the Salton Sea. (Symposium report) The Salton Sea in California has problems with hypersalinity and pollution. But two polychaete species live in it - a nereid and a spionid. See Benthic sampling poster.
• Colour in Burgess Shale animals and the effect of light on evolution in the Cambrian. Brief summary of a 1998 paper by Andrew Parker on his diffraction-grating iridescence idea.
• Postage stamp - The discovery of Pogonophora. A.V.Ivanov. 1955-1957. Stamp set on the achievements of Russian scientists in the 20th century. Ivanov is the 9th stamp (3rd row, 3rd column). But did he really discover Pogonophora?

Search Museum collections for Annelida.

(Museum links last authenticated 9 February 1999 - all working.)

• Pacific Rim Biodiversity Catalog - annelid holdings from a postal survey.
• Yale Peabody Museum Catalog.
• California Academy of Sciences Catalog. That's still a gopher link, and in case it disappears here is the link for the CAS Invert. Zoo. Dept
• Harvard University Catalog. The catalog of the Invertebrate Zoology Dept of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard. Ralph Chamberlin types are there (for example the previously enigmatic spionid Morants duplex, now known to be a Spiophanes).
• Bishop Museum, Hawaii marine invertebrate databases (needs Java-enabled browser). Includes at least 1892 Polychaeta lots.
• National Museum of Wales. Includes catalogue of Annelids by Andy Mackie. (Search tip: an equals sign (e.g., =Nereis) prevents word expansion (to Perinereis, etc)).
• Search Field Museum's collection of Hydrothermal Vent Invertebrates.

Random Field trips to Oligochaete & leech places
• Oligochaetes in Italian groundwater
• The earthworm hole. Trish Fraser presents information on New Zealand earthworms and earthworms in agriculture (New Zealand Institute for Crop and Food Research).
• Leech and Oligochaete images at the BIODIDAC site.
• Oligochaetes at the Swedish Museum of Natural History (Christer Erséus).
• Worm Digest Cyber Worm links. Vermiculture and links to worms in composting, etc.
• The ballad of the ice-worm cocktail by Robert W. Service (a Service poetry home page here), is one of the more unusual appearances of worms and 'scientific guys' in poetry. Glacier ice-worms exist in North America and may be a small black oligochaete worm, Mesenchytraeus solifugus which "appear on the surface about four o'clock in the afternoon, moving sluggishly about" in the pink snow (due to an alga) (after Stephenson, 1930). More (probably unreliable) detail about the iceworms here .
• 'Tremors' is film about earthworms (of a sort). A tongue-in-cheek comedy thriller (1990) concerning some unbelievable monster worms which burrow at incredible speed through dry- as-bone Nevada sand! See the poster (nothing like the worms in the film!), or, for devotees of this movie, a 5 Megabyte quicktime video clip of Reba McEntire in battle with a worm. Wow!
• The Diplocardia mississippiensis story. About 'grunting' with a 'stob' (harvesting worms by vibration) in the Apalachicola, Florida. An intriguing tale by Kenneth Brower from The Atlantic Monthly; March 1999. See also a related article about research by Paul Hendrix, "Unearthing the Secrets of Worms".
• World bibliography on subterranean Aphanoneura - Oligochaeta, by Bernard Lebreton.
• The giant Gippsland Earthworm, Megascolides australis lives in the Bass River Valley, Victoria Australia. A page at the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
• Tubifex tubifex and Trout Whirling disease. There are many pages on whirling disease and its effects on trout fisheries in western U.S.A. Pages here, here, here, and here have information. The worm is an intermediate host to the Myxobolus cerebralis parasite that affects the nerves and cartilage of trout, especially young fish. The 6th Annual Whirling Disease Symposium was held in Idaho, February 3-5, 2000, and a report on the 1999 symposium is online.
• Earthworm profiles, a page by Robert Bugg on earthworms in Californian vineyards.
• Project Gutenberg Etexts has online the complete text of Darwin's 1881 book "The formation of vegetable mould through the action of worms with observations on their habits". There seems not to be a reprint available.
  Charles Darwin on earthworms' mental abilities - "There is little to be said on this head. We have seen that worms are timid. It may be doubted whether they suffer as much pain when injured, as they seem to express by their contortions. Judging by their eagerness for certain kinds of food, they must enjoy the pleasure of eating. Their sexual passion is strong enough to overcome for a time their dread of light. They perhaps have a trace of social feeling, for they are not disturbed by crawling over each other's bodies, and they sometimes lie in contact.".
• Amazon.com earthworm books. A list, not at www.amazon.com, but at a site titled 'All about Earthworms.'

"If there's anything in the world I hate, it's leeches - filthy little devils!" - Charlie (Humphrey Bogart) in the 'African Queen.' However, for over two thousand years, leeches have had a role in medical bloodletting. Even today medicinal leeches are used when there is a need to encourage local blood supply after trauma, and the anti-clotting chemicals produced by leeches are of great interest in medical science.

• Leeches USA Ltd "proudly and efficiently supplies over 20,000 leeches per year." Site has further information on leech maintenance & usage.
• Biopharm Leeches is "home to over 50,000 leeches supplied to hospitals and research laboratories around the world." Biopharm can supply the three volume book, "Leech Biology and Behaviour" by R.T. SAWYER
• Leeches used in bloodletting. Page at Biomedical Library, UCLA.
• Those Amazing Leeches. Book by Cheryl M. Halton (USA $13.95, Hardcover - 120 pages (March 1989) Dillon Press; ISBN: 0875184081). An adapted 'educational' excerpt is "Leechlove".
• Leech "seminar", from Genentech on their use of leeches in blood-clotting research. Leechlove (above) is part of this set.
• Coloured poster from the film "Attack of the giant leeches". Seemingly a badly-made B&W horror-film from 1959 (when irradiated leeches grow huge in a southern bayou, a local storekeeper sees his chance to be rid of his trashy, two-timing wife -- feed her to the leeches). Available on video.
• Leech Makes Comeback In Medicine - news story from The Columbus Dispatch online at OhioHealth.
• Leeches, a page of photos by Ukrainian fish leech expert Andrei Utevsky.
• leech segmentation: Helobdella gene research by Marty Shankland, U. Texas.

Random Field trips to Vent, seep and whale bone fauna (also gas-hydrate ice-worms) & Annelid Allies places
• Hot springs and strange creatures (at US Geol. Survey)
• Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents (at U. Wash. School of Oceanography Exploraquarium)
• Life without Light: Discoveries from the Abyss The discovery of chemosynthesis in vent worms.
• Hot Vents, a brief overview with vent worm photos.
• Black Smoker Life forms, part of American Museum of Natural History Black Smoker Expedition pages.
• Ocean AdVENTure fauna page, includes Pompeii vent worm.
• Riftia pachyptila tube worm. Outline information at U. Delaware, includes quicktime movie.
• Alissa's life with toxic sulfide (Alissa J. Arp). Page four has the wormy bits (vestimentifera, the seep hesionid), and there is an index.
• Ancient extravangance, refers to the cold seep pogonophores of Gulf of Mexico. This is a gee whiz news story based on the longevity claim in Bergquist et al, Nature, pp. 499-500, Feb. 2, 2000.
• Cold seeps and the iceworms, Gulf of Mexico.
• Iceworms page at Mineral Management Services.
• Lair of the ice-worm, a page of Texas A & M University (Ian MacDonald and Samantha Joye).
• Note: The ice-worm was formally described by Daniel Desbruyeres and Andre Toulmond (1998):
  A new species of hesionid worm, Hesiocaeca methanicola sp. nov. (Polychaeta: Hesionidae), living in ice-like methane hydrates in the deep Gulf of Mexico.
  Cahiers de Biologie Marine 39(1), 93-98.
• Extreme Worms, an online article by Stephanie Pain from New Scientist 25 July 98. Ice-worm and Pompeii worm.
• Worm wizardry, a University of Delaware article on the temperature tolerance of Pompeii worms.
• Another Pompeii worm item at University of Delaware.
• Life among the whale bones. Various polychaetes are amongst the inhabitants at whale-falls - the remains of dead whales lying on the sea bottom in deep water. See also NOAA February 2000 news item. As described in the article "This Whale's (After) Life" an orange chrysopetalid polychaete is extremely abundant at an intermediate stage of the decomposition. Intriguingly this species appears to be related to a sulphide tolerant Black Sea polychaete, Vigtorniella zaika known mainly from its planktonic larvae (see Annelida list comment by Leslie Harris). Worms normally found at deep-sea vents may occur at the final stage. "Undertakers of the deep" is another article. Whale-fall ecology is studied by Craig R. Smith of University of Hawai'i.

Online bibliographes
• Effects of temperature on invertebrates and fish. Maryland Sea grant research. Searchable & includes polychaetes.
• Serpulid bibliography of Elena Kupriyanova. Static page. Spirorbidae by Alexander Rzhavsky (about 140Kb in one page of html). Copied with permission. An untouched, 'mirror' copy (updated from time to time) of the original (http://rav.sio.rssi.ru/~lena/spir- lit.html).
• Ward & Fauchald Polychaetes. The online searchable version of the 1997 database.
• Aquatic Annelida bibliography. Mark Wetzel hosted static pages of yearly NABS bibliographies.
• Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is an electronic collection of (United States) agricultural texts published between the early nineteenth century and the middle to late twentieth century. This is an excellently designed search system from the Mann Library, Cornell University. Includes for example the text of "Friend earthworm; practical application of a lifetime study of habits of the most important animal in the world" (1941) by George Sheffield Oliver.

No, that wormy thingy is not an annelid
• Land planarian Bipalium kewense. You saw a worm in your garden which is long, flat, brown striped, unsegmented, and with a hammer-shaped head? Check this link. It might be the flat worm (phylum Platyhelminthes) Bipalium kewense, which has travelled to many countries, or one of its relatives. It eats earthworms. [ Berkeley introduction to the platyhelminthes ]
• White, shiny skin, and usually very, very, small (pinworms, threadworms), and thousands of them? It might be a nematode (Phylum Nematoda). These occur free- living, and as parasites. They are everywhere, and many are pests in gardens and farms (and people). [ Nematode Basics ] [Berkeley introduction to the nematodes ].
• Nemerteans (phylum Nemertinea) live mostly in the sea. Sometimes colourful, sometimes drab, with a thread-like proboscis, they are unsegmented, flat, tough-bodied, predators of polychaetes, crustaceans and other invertebrates. [ Berkeley introduction to the Nemertini ].

Please help to keep the field-trips page up-to-date. Send mail about broken links.

Original 1996. Last update 2 December 2000. Please look in again soon.