Worm Webs and Wormstuff

Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes in a lab notices a phenomenon that has been under the noses of researchers for a long time but ignored as a distraction. After more careful observations, replications, and basic experimental characterization, a study of prior literature, and discussion with experts in the field, it can be worth sharing with the world. In this case the fresh pair of eyes were those of new lab member May Li. As May was getting her experimental sea legs in the lab, learning the "mundane" tasks of culturing and handling worms, she noticed some striking collective spatial patterns of organization exhibited by colonies of worms as they consume all of the food their plate. It seems that worms form sparse, web-like patterns of living worms -- we which we dub worm webs, built on a scaffold of wormstuff (our dubbing) - a substance or mixture provided by other living or dead worms that likely provides sustenance to the starving culture.

After some rigorous follow up work, critical and self-skeptical thinking, and discussion with other worm scientists, we had a report-worthy result, published using the simply awesome micropublication platform built and run by Paul Sternberg's group at Caltech.

This is curiosity-driven science at its best. And a refreshing piece of good old classical "low-throughput" observational biology. Will worm webs and wormstuff hold up as stable, interesting phenomena worth further study? We shall see.

The paper:

https://www.focolab.org/publications/c.-elegans-under-starvation-produce-proteinaceous-material-that-supports-collective-aggregation-into-web-like-structures

Congrats May, Rex, and team.