species: colonies of the genus Pyrosoma
Habitat: open ocean in warm tropical and temperate waters
Ever feel that you're not that coordinated? Just imagine what life would be like if you were part of a giant colony of tiny individuals that all have to do the same thing at the same time.
Huge free-floating coalitions of marine invertebrates known as pyrosomes have to move together to ensure the colony can feed and move in the right direction. They lack any common nerves to communicate, so they may have a different way to move in time – light signalling.
Pyrosomes are made up of hundreds or thousands of clones called zooids. The entire brightly lit colony sprouts from a single individual, and the zooids mesh themselves together as the colony grows outwards in concentric circles from a closed tip to an ever-widening mouth. When the colony is small it looks rather like a butterfly net. As it lengthens, it becomes more like a giant worm that can reach the length of a sperm whale.
The zooids can reproduce by cloning, so the colony can regenerate injured parts and theoretically live forever, shrinking and growing based on available food and physical disturbance.
Huge but invisible
These giant glowing worms can't help but stand out. Yet pyrosomes remain an enigma. With so few people actually having seen them, when a video was posted on a major news site earlier this month saying it was showing pyrosomes, it took several days before anyone spotted that what had really been caught on camera was a mass of squid eggs.
The portraits of pyrosomes are fleshed out with anecdotes. Some divers say that swarms are as soft and delicate as feathers, whereas others claim they are tough enough to ensnare and drown unfortunate penguins.
