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Plant-animal worms round themselves up in circular mills on the beach

Sendova-Franks, Ana; Franks, Nigel; Worley, Alan

Plant-animal worms round themselves up in circular mills on the beach Thumbnail


Authors

Ana Sendova-Franks

Nigel Franks

Alan Worley



Abstract

© 2018 The Authors. Collective motion is a fascinating and intensely studied manifestation of collective behaviour. Circular milling is an impressive example. It occurs in fishes, processionary caterpillars and army ants, among others. Its adaptive significance, however, is not yet well understood. Recently, we demonstrated experimentally circular milling in the marine plant-animal worm Symsagittifera roscoffensis.We hypothesized that its function is to gather the worms and facilitate the dense films they form on the beach to promote the photosynthesis of their symbiotic algae. Here, we report for the first time, to our knowledge, the occurrence of S. roscoffensis circular mills in nature and show that it is by no means rare. The size and behaviour of circular mills in their natural environment is compatible with our earlier experimental results. This makes S. roscoffensis a good study system for understanding the proximate and ultimate mechanisms of circular milling.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 27, 2018
Publication Date Jul 1, 2018
Deposit Date Jul 26, 2018
Publicly Available Date Jul 26, 2018
Journal Royal Society Open Science
Electronic ISSN 2054-5703
Publisher Royal Society, The
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 5
Issue 7
DOI https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180665
Keywords circular mills, collective motion, collective behaviour
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/864197
Publisher URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180665
Related Public URLs http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/7/180665.figures-only
Additional Information Additional Information : Electronic Supplementary Videos could be found at: http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/7/180665.figures-only
Contract Date Jul 26, 2018

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