This research is part of the first author, Takahiro Sugiyama san’s PhD ! I’m super grateful to have been able to contribute with my samples, and proud that we could deliver this teaming up worms and sea cucumber nerds 😎@miselab.bsky.social

It is indeed one species, with remarkable camouflage abilities !!! Please take a moment to marvel at their top level mimicry skills 🪱 💯 And there is a ton more research to do to figure out how they do this, if they can change color when they switch hosts and so on!!

Because they have different colors and live on different hosts we suspected they could belong to different species, or perhaps be on their way to becoming different species… so we looked at the similarity in their DNA to check… 🧬🧬🧬and DNA proved our hypothesis wrong!

Check out their super cute faces! Some color morph even match the aspect of sand grains on their host!

In coral reefs there is a very cool species of scale worms that lives on sea cucumbers! 🌊🥒 They change colors according to the sea cucumbers they are living on.🎨

So much work!!! The picture is stunning

Omg that’s gorilla chop!!!! I’m a snorkel guide I was working there today!! I saw a group of people with a guy that looked like Ben Shirey. I thought there’s no way must be a lookalike. It all makes sense now ! Wish I’d say hello, I’ve been following you since I was an undergrad🥺

Wow I didn’t know that!!! That’s so fascinating. This is inspiration for some goofy horror movies