Latest news with #UniversityofKonstanz
Arabian Post
4 days ago
- Science
- Arabian Post
Tiny Worms Erect 'Living Towers' to Catch Insect Rides
Scientists have observed that under intense environmental pressure, nematode worms assemble into towering collective structures to disperse by hitching rides on passing insects. This phenomenon, documented in decaying orchard fruit in Germany, represents the first natural evidence of cooperative 'towering' behaviour among nematodes. Field researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz spent months scanning fallen apples and pears with digital microscopes, capturing worms forming vertical towers several millimetres tall. Once attached to an insect such as a fruit fly, the entire column would detach and ride off, a strategy to reach new habitats. The towers consist exclusively of a single species in the stress-resistant 'dauer' larval stage, suggesting selective group assembly rather than random aggregation among various worm genera. Postdoctoral researcher Daniela Perez describes these towers as 'a coordinated structure, a superorganism in motion'. ADVERTISEMENT Laboratory experiments using Caenorhabditis elegans confirmed these findings. In vitro tests placed starved worms on nutrient-deprived agar fitted with a vertical bristle. Within hours, worms climbed one another, forming towers that remained stable for over 12 hours and even extended 'arms' to bridge gaps. When touched or when an insect passed by, the structures would reorient and attach en masse. Unlike ants or slime moulds, nematode towers display no evident division of roles. Each worm, whether atop the structure or at its base, shares similar mobility and reproductive potential in the lab. This egalitarian dynamic reflects clonal origin; however, wild towers may harbour more complex genetic interactions, pointing to open questions about cooperation, conflict and even cheating. The study positions nematodes among a rare group of organisms—such as fire ants, slime moulds and spider mites—that link bodies for coordinated movement. Given nematodes' global prevalence, this discovery opens new avenues for research into collective motion, ecological dispersal and bio-inspired design, especially with the genetic tools available for the C. elegans model. Senior author Serena Ding emphasises the novelty: with the right field tools, 'natural worm towers existed only in our imaginations. But … they were hiding in plain sight'.
Time of India
12-06-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Scientists spot ‘superorganism' in the wild for the first time — and it's made of worms
Source: Live Science For the first time ever, scientists have observed a group of tiny worms called nematodes forming a strange 'living tower' in nature. This kind of behaviour is known as forming 'superorganism' which had only been seen in laboratory experiments before — never in nature. This exciting discovery was made by researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz in Germany while studying decaying fruit like apples and pears in local orchards. They were shocked to see the worms pile up into small towers and move together like one big creature. Nematode towers: How worms work together to move These worm towers were made mostly by a special life stage of the nematode called the dauer stage. In this phase, worms are not feeding, but they can survive in tough environments for long periods. Scientists believe these dauer worms were working together to build the towers as a way to escape rotting fruit and search for a new, better place to live. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Run Your Business Like a Pro - Top Trending Accounting Software (Check Now) Accounting ERP Click Here Undo Originally, experts thought this type of tower-building was a form of competition, where each worm tried to reach the top for its own benefit. But the new findings suggest the opposite — the worms were cooperating, acting more like a team than rivals. According to Live Science, the footage of the same was captured by researchers in Konstanz, Germany, on fallen apples and pears at local orchards. The team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the University of Konstanz were then able to combine these images with follow-up laboratory experiments to demonstrate that the 'towering' behavior happens naturally, and that the worms engage in such behaviour as a means of mass transit Unexpected teamwork of tiny worms in nature, for the first time This kind of behavior is known as forming a 'superorganism' — when many individuals join forces and behave as one single being. It's something seen in other animals too, like fire ants, which build bridges and rafts out of their own bodies, or slime molds, which merge into one big moving blob to find food. The researchers say this shows even very simple creatures like worms can work together in clever and surprising ways. By acting as a group, the worms increase their chances of surviving in harsh environments and reaching new habitats. The discovery opens the door to learning more about group behavior in small organisms and could even help scientists understand the early steps of how teamwork and social behavior evolved in nature. Also read: Teleios: a mysterious sphere floating in the Milky Way
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Watch 'superorganism' created by tiny worms — the first time it's ever been spotted in the wild
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Nematodes have been spotted forming writhing towers of tiny worms in the wild for the first time, according to a report in the journal Current Biology. The bizarre behavior had previously only been observed in experimental settings, thought to be a competitive attempt to escape from the rest of the group. However, new images of these towers forming in the wild hint at a more mutually-beneficial motivation. The footage was captured by researchers in Konstanz, Germany, on fallen apples and pears at local orchards. The team from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the University of Konstanz were then able to combine these images with follow-up laboratory experiments to demonstrate that the 'towering' behavior happens naturally, and that the worms engage in such behaviour as a means of mass transit. 'I was ecstatic when I saw these natural towers for the first time,' said senior author Serena Ding, group leader at the MPI-AB, describing the moment when co-author Ryan Greenway, a biologist at the University of Konstanz, sent her a video recording from the field. 'For so long natural worm towers existed only in our imaginations. But with the right equipment and lots of curiosity, we found them hiding in plain sight.' That curiosity also revealed some interesting aspects of worm cooperation. While the researchers observed many nematode species crawling inside the fruit, only a single species in the same developmental period — a tough larval stage known as a 'dauer' — participated in tower building. That level of species specificity in worm tower 'construction' hinted that there might be more driving the behavior than a seemingly random creature cluster. Related: Nematode resurrected from Siberian permafrost lay dormant for 46,000 years 'A nematode tower is not just a pile of worms,' said study first author Daniela Perez, a postdoctoral researcher at MPI-AB. 'It's a coordinated structure, a superorganism in motion.' The paper suggested these observations could serve as a 'missing link' into behavior of similar organisms. Such towering behavior has previously been observed in slime molds, fire ants and spider mites, but it is still relatively rare in nature. To see if other kinds of worms could also form such a 'superorganism', researchers created conditions to coach the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans into assembling into similar structures. C. elegans is a model organism that is widely studied for both its behavior and biology. Perez stuck a toothbrush bristle into a food-free agar plate to act as a sort scaffold — then unleashed the worms. Within two hours, the C. elegans formed a tower using the bristle as its spine. Some smaller clusters of worms reached out exploratory 'arms,' while others bridged gaps between spaces. And when researchers tapped the top of the tower with a glass pick, the worms wriggled toward that stimulus. 'The towers are actively sensing and growing,' says Perez. 'When we touched them, they responded immediately, growing toward the stimulus and attaching to it.' RELATED STORIES —Why do worms come out in the rain? —Australian 'trash parrots' have now developed a local 'drinking tradition' —Wandering salamander: The tree‑climbing amphibian with a blood‑powered grip The researchers also wondered if there was some sort of worm hierarchy driving this activity. Did younger worms have to do all the work? Stronger ones? Smaller, weaker ones? It turns out that the roundworms were remarkably egalitarian in their efforts. Unlike the orchard-based nematodes, the laboratory-bound C. elegans represented a range of life stages, from larval to adult — but they all pitched in. That suggests 'towering' may be a more generalized strategy for group movement than previously thought. 'Our study opens up a whole new system for exploring how and why animals move together,' says Ding.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
These worms stack together to form living towers, new study finds
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Nature seems to offer an escape from the hustle and bustle of city life, but the world at your feet may tell another story. Even in the shade of a fruit tree, you could be surrounded by tiny skyscrapers — not made of steel or concrete, but of microscopic worms wriggling and writhing into the shape of long, vertical towers. Even though these miniature architects, called nematodes, are found all over Earth's surface, scientists in Germany recently witnessed their impressive building techniques in nature for the first time. After months of closely inspecting rotten pears and apples in local orchards, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz were able to spot hundreds of the 1-millimeter-long (0.04-inch) worms climbing onto one another, amassing structures up to 10 times their individual size. To learn more about the mysterious physics of the soft, slimy towers, the study team brought samples of nematodes called Caenorhabditis elegans into a lab and analyzed them. There, the scientists noticed the worms could assemble in a matter of hours, with some reaching out from the twisting mass as exploratory 'arms' sensing the environment and building accordingly. But why the worms formed the structures wasn't immediately clear. The team's findings, published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, show that even the smallest animals can prompt big questions about the evolutionary purpose of social behaviors. 'What we got was more than just some worms standing on top of each other,' said senior study author Serena Ding, a Max Planck research group leader of genes and behavior. 'It's a coordinated superorganism, acting and moving as a whole.' To find out what was motivating the nematodes' building behavior, the study team tested the worms' reactions to being poked, prodded and even visited by a fly — all while stacked in a tower formation. 'We saw that they are very reactive to the presence of a stimulus,' said the study's first author, Daniela Perez, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. 'They sense it, and then the tower goes towards this stimulus, attaching itself to our metal pick or a fly buzzing around.' This coordinated reaction suggests the hungry nematodes may be joining together to easily hitch a ride on larger animals such as insects that transport them to (not so) greener pastures with more rotten fruit to feast on, Perez said. 'If you think about it, an animal that is 1 millimeter long cannot just crawl all the way to the next fruit 2 meters (6.6 feet) away. It could easily die on the way there, or be eaten by a predator,' Perez explained. Nematodes are capable of hitchhiking solo too, she added, but arriving to a new area in a group may allow them to continue reproducing. The structures themselves may also serve as a mode of transport, as evidenced by how some worms formed bridges across gaps within the petri dishes to get from one surface to another, Perez noted. 'This discovery is really exciting,' said Orit Peleg, an associate professor of computer science who studies living systems at the University of Colorado Boulder's BioFrontiers Institute. 'It's both establishing the ecological function of creating a tower, and it really opens up the door to do more controlled experimentation to try to understand the perceptual world of these organisms, and how they communicate within a large group.' Peleg was not involved in the study. As the next step, Perez said her team would like to learn whether the formation of these structures is a cooperative or competitive behavior. In other words, are the towering nematodes behaving socially to help each other out, or are their towers more akin to a Black Friday sale stampede? Studying the behaviors of other self-assembling creatures could offer clues to the social norms of nematodes and help answer this question, Ding said. Ants, which assemble to form buoyant rafts to survive floodwaters, are among the few creatures known to team up like nematodes, said David Hu, a professor of mechanical engineering and biology at Georgia Tech. Hu was not involved in the study. 'Ants are incredibly sacrificial for one another, and they do not generally fight within the colony,' Hu said. 'That's because of their genetics. They all come from the same queen, so they are like siblings.' Like ants, nematodes didn't appear to display any obvious role differentiation or hierarchy within the tower structures, Perez said. Each worm from the base to the top of the structure was equally mobile and strong, indicating no competition was at play. However, the lab-cultivated worms were basically clones of one another, so it's not clear whether role differentiation occurs more often in nature, where nematode populations could have more genetic differences, she noted. Additionally, socially cooperative creatures tend to use some form of communication, Peleg said. In the case of ants, it may be their pheromone trails, while honeybees rely on their ritual dance routines and slime molds use their pulsing chemical signals. With nematodes, however, it's still not clear how they might communicate — or if they are communicating at all, Ding said. 'The next steps for (the team) are really just choosing the next questions to ask.' Notably, there has been a lot of interest in studying cooperative animal behaviors among the robotics community, Hu said. It's possible that one day, he added, information about the complex sociality of creatures like nematodes could be used to inform how technology, such as computer servers or drone systems, communicates.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Worms Use Their Bodies to Build Towers as a Wild Survival Strategy
Under the clinical sterility of glassware, life can do some rather curious things. Whether such behaviors are exclusive to laboratory environments or represent a common survival strategy is often a topic for heated debate. One bizarre activity glimpsed in past lab experiments has now been recorded under natural conditions, proving once and for all that some worm species will construct towers from their own squirming bodies to catch a ride out of town when the going gets tough. Positioning a digital microscope over rotting fruit, researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany watched the itty-bitty scavengers feed until it was time to migrate to greener pastures by climbing atop one another and stretching for the sky. "I was ecstatic when I saw these natural towers for the first time," says animal behaviorist and senior author Serena Ding. "For so long natural worm towers existed only in our imaginations. But with the right equipment and lots of curiosity, we found them hiding in plain sight." Though rare, there are a few examples of animal collectives that link their bodies in creative ways to move around. Ants can make bridges and rafts, for example. Spider mites will sacrifice themselves in the centers of silk balls to help siblings flee on the breeze. Tales of nematodes cooperating to rise above their rotting substrate to latch onto a passing fly have emerged from a handful of semi-natural observations and laboratory experiments. As tempting as it is to simply accept worms into the exclusive club of meat architects, Ding and her colleagues felt evidence of the craft required a less synthetic setting. So the researchers collected the decaying remains of apples and pears around the University of Konstanz in late summer and autumn, and took a close look at the species of Caenorhabditis nematodes squirming through the mush. Their recordings captured the activity of a life stage known as a dauer – an alternative developmental condition that allows worms to survive harsh conditions. The tough teens of one nematode species had gathered around fine projections extending from the fruit's rotting flesh and stretched their bodies, swaying in unison or 'nictating' back and forth. Selecting and placing towers in petri dishes for easier manipulation revealed it was not only possible for these structures to breach gaps in the fruit, but that dauers at the summits of the writhing scaffolds could grab onto landing fruit flies and take to the air. "A nematode tower is not just a pile of worms," says biologist and lead author Daniela Perez. "It's a coordinated structure, a superorganism in motion." Knowing at least some species of Caenorhabditis can work together to escape overcrowding or famine blurs the lines further between social organisms like bees, ants, and even ourselves. With improvements in genetics tools and detailed knowledge of the conditions in which this collaboration arises, the researchers hope to study the complexity of the towers themselves, potentially even revealing degrees of diversity between those at the base and the high-flying penthouse dauers at the top. "Our study opens up a whole new system for exploring how and why animals move together," says Ding. This research was published in Current Biology. Elusive LSD Fungus Finally Discovered on Flower We've Finally Seen The Skyscraper Tsunami That Shook Earth For 9 Days Astronauts Reveal The Shocking Beauty of Lightning From Space
