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Some marine worms have developed a unknown reproduction strategy : They essentially rise a second worm on their rear ends , brain and all . This bizarre twin then breaks off and swims aside to mate with other swimming laughingstock of the opposite sexuality .
In a study release Nov. 22 inScientific Reports , researchers described exactly how Japanese unripened syllids ( Megasyllis nipponica ) reproduce in this very eldritch way .
A female Japanese green syllids (Megasyllis nipponica) developing a stolon.
Most of the 1,000 coinage of syllid worm live on the bottom of the ocean . When some species are quick to reproduce , they undergo major changes , developing more muscular bodies and structure that enable them to float in the water pillar — meaning they can travel prospicient distance to find mates . Much of their body people is exchange to the product of eggs or spermatozoan . This body form is known as an epitoke . The vast legal age of mintage exit after they reproduce .
Others , like Japanese green syllids , grow an epitoke at their tail ending — called a runner . This structure then breaks off and swim away to place members of the opposite sex and produce the next generation . Study co - authorToru Miura , a biologist with the Misaki Marine Biological Station at the The University of Tokyo , told Live Science that the procedure enable these worms to repeatedly multiply .
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The stolon is not just a disembodied poop , though . It develops its own slimly smaller brain , two sets of eyes and four pairs of antennae . The gonad , or sex organs , develop in the stolon first , follow by the head , eyes , antenna and a serial of bristle . The stolon does not , however , have a operational lip or digestive system . " The only labor of the stolon is to engender sperm or egg , so they choke soon after spawning , " Miura said .
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The researchers were curious about the grammatical construction of Hox genes — which set the eubstance program of an organism — in the stolon . They ab initio assume that the genes would directly mirror those in the being itself , with genes for the principal , midsection and hindquarters expressed in the same places . " However , the head - determination cistron were recruited at the position of the stolon psyche , bespeak that a stolon consists only of a head and a posterior without the mid part of the original body , " Miura explained .
While the chemical mechanism by which the runner detaches is not yet full understood , it likely just breaks off when it starts to squirm . " likely , only the outer epidermis [ pelt ] is connect just before the detachment . At the time , the attaching runner can autonomously move and aggressively float , so the active swim movement triggers the detachment , " Miura said .
Once the offset breaks off to search for love in the piddle column , a lilliputian bud matures on the remaining worm and replaces the lose shadower . It then continues mucking around for solid food as it grows its next detachable butt .
