Tiny, flittering swimmer wasn’t a worm, a mollusk, or a crustacean. What was it?
One of those intrigued was Igor Adameyko, a developmental neurobiologist at the Medical University of Vienna. Adameyko asked Minemizu whether he had taken a specimen, and, if so, whether he might share it. Not long after, a package arrived at the Karolinska Institute, where Adameyko also works.
The hemisphere they were all attached to was even weirder. It was essentially a glob of hundreds of sperm-shaped organisms with heads about the size of a pencil point and tails much thinner than a human hair. The tails were tangled together in a center knot, with heads all pointed outward. There are fewer passengers at the top, where the sailors hold on, which may have flattened that side of the spherical mass.
With his training in neuroimmunology, Adameyko tried staining the organisms with various antibodies to better reveal their internal anatomy. This helped, some. The pattern of cells in the nervous system suggested the animals belong to a vast group called the lophotrochozoans, which includes mollusks, corallike animals called bryozoans, brachiopods, and flatworms.
Digenean flukes are part of a large and diverse group of parasites known as trematodes. Adults live inside a vertebrate host—fish, cats, or people, for example—and then release eggs into the environment. Some flukes have evolved a behavior in which the larvae join into shapes that mimic small organisms. In doing so, they entice a fish to eat the larvae, so they can continue their life cycle inside the host.By fluttering, larger white larvae move a colony through the water.
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