Beard Worm

beard worm, (family Siboglinidae), also called beardworm or siboglinid, any of a group of polychaetes (marine worms) constituting the family Siboglinidae. Beard worms live sedentary lives in long protective tubes on the seafloor throughout the world. The common name beard worm refers to the beardlike mass of pinnate (featherlike) tentacles borne at the anterior end of many species. An intestine, which forms in embryos, disappears as development progresses. Males and females are generally similar in appearance. Beard worms are the only multicellular animals that have neither a mouth nor an anus in their adult stage.

giant tube worm (Riftia pachyptila)

Siboglinids were first classified in the early 20th century. The first species, Siboglinum weberi, described in 1914 by French biologist Maurice Caullery and placed in the family Siboglinidae, came from the seas of the Malay Archipelago, and the second species, Lamellisabella zachsi, which came from the Sea of Okhotsk, was described in 1933. In 1937 a class called Pogonophora was established for Lamellisabella. In 1955 a close affinity between Siboglinum and Lamellisabella was proved, and the members were placed in the phylum Pogonophora. However, beard worms were reexamined using DNA sequencing techniques in the late 1990s, and by 2001 the pognophorans, as well as the species of the phylum Vestimentifera, were placed back in the family Siboglinidae. Some 34 genera and roughly 120 species are ascribed to the family. Beard worms are thought to have diverged from other groups of annelids more than 500 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period (541 million to 485.4 million years ago).

Beard worms usually inhabit marine waters to depths that exceed 1,000 metres (3,280 feet) along continental slopes and near spreading centres, hydrothermal vents, methane seeps, and other regions of undersea volcanic activity. Some species have been found at depths of less than 100 metres (66 feet), while others have been found in deeper waters ranging from 7,000 to 10,000 metres (22,900 to 32,800 feet). Several species inhabit deep-sea trenches of the Pacific and the Indian oceans, and many genera have a discontinuous distribution.