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Once upon a time my friend and labmate Ai, who studies pygmy seahorses, brought me a worm she found on the coral host of the seahorse…🪸🪱

It was Haplosyllis anthogorgicola; a very unique and special species that lives inside corals in enormous population. Yes this orange ball is a giant clump of tiny worms (~5mm) that all came out of this very coral fragment! 🪱🪱🪱 Oddly enough the corals can grow big regardless.

H. anthogorgicola lives in small galleries and burrows inside the corals, as Utinomi drew when describing the species in 1956. This lifestyle probably made the species difficult to find; our records are the first since its orginal description!

We also noticed that we could see the burrows and galleries of the worms in our underwater pictures...

And, back to the seahorse! Look at this tiny, pink, camouflaged, CUTE seahorse! And what humans like to do with cute animals ? Take their picture, of course!📸💡

So, we looked in the background of pictures of pygmy seahorses taken by divers on iNaturalist . And lo and behold, the burrows and worms galleries were visible there, in 3/4 of the pictures! Here is an example inaturalist.org/observations/1…

These records helped us map the distribution of those coral-dwelling worms, which seem to be all around the Central Indo-Pacific!

But there's more! Sometimes we could not only see the burrows and galleries, but also the worms themselves, photobombing the seahorse!📸🪱😎

Most of the time, the worms were "chilling" in their burrows, with only their antennae outside, probably sensing the movement of surrounding water and nearby coral polyps.

But sometimes, they partially exited the burrows to interact with things such as debris on the coral. This hints that they may be helping the coral by cleaning it. Can you spot the worm and beige debris on the branch on the top right of the seahorse ? 🧐inaturalist.org/observations/3…

Surprisingly, in some pictures, they raised out of their burrows towards the seahorse, seemingly intimidating it, perhaps in an attempt to defend their host or avoid being preyed. inaturalist.org/observations/9…

In some pictures, they were even crawling on the seahorse! inaturalist.org/observations/2…

Anyway, this goes to show that charismatic and popular species can sometimes help us learn about the ones that are lesser known or nearly forgotten. And we will probably be able to better understand all of them when considering their interactions together!

The Trojan seahorse: how citizen science photos of pygmy seahorses unintentionally revealed the prevalence of an overlooked marine worm | ow.ly/It7y50U6QeC #ProcB Chloé Fourreau Laura Macrina James Davis Reimer

Haplosyllis anthogorgicola, overlooked for 68 years and now in the news! defector.com/a-small-and-be… #WormWednesday Laura Macrina James Davis Reimer iNaturalist

Haplosyllis anthogorgicola photobombing seahorses, in CNN😎 cnn.com/2024/11/15/sci… #WormWednesday

Honored to have contributed to this amazing work led by Professor McFadden! 🪸 Biodiversity and biogeography of zooxanthellate soft corals across the Indo-Pacific is now out on Scientific Reports and available open access at: nature.com/articles/s4159…

floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/worlds…

Ancient Lost Sea Leaves Its Mark on Global Soft Coral Diversity scienmag.com/ancient-lost-s…

Scientists have completed the largest survey of soft coral diversity ever conducted. Their results show that soft corals have been radiating in a small corner of what was once a giant sea., via EurekAlert!! Florida Museum eurekalert.org/news-releases/…