Bonellia viridis

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Green Spoonworm

Bonellia viridis (adult female).

Kingdom:	Animalia
Subkingdom:	Eumetazoa
Superphylum:	Lophotrochozoa
Phylum:	Annelida
Class:	Echiura
Order:	Echiuroinea
Family:	Bonelliidae
Genus:	Bonellia
Species:	Bonellia viridis

Binomial name

Bonellia viridis
(Rolando, 1821)

The Green Spoonworm (Bonellia viridis) is a marine worm (phylum Echiura) noted for displaying exceptional sexual dimorphism and for the biocidal properties of a pigment in its skin.

The species is wide-ranging, found in the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean, Indian and Pacific Oceans, and the Mediterranean and Red seas. The pale- to dark-green female, with a 15 cm-long, round or sausage-shaped body, lives on the sea-floor at a depth of 10 to 100 meters, concealed by burrowing in gravel or hiding in rock crevasses or burrows abandoned by other animals. It has two anchoring hooks underneath its body and an extensible feeding proboscis up to 10 times its body-length. It is mainly a detritivore, feeding also on small animals. The male is rarely observed: it has a flat, unpigmented body which grows to only 1-3 mm, taken up mostly by reproductive organs and devoid of other structures; they live on or inside the body of a female.

[edit] Green Spoonworm and bonellin as biocidal agent

The adult Bonellia female produces a vivid green pigment in its skin, known as bonellin. This chemical, concentrated mostly in the proboscis, is highly toxic to other organisms, capable of paralyzing small animals. In the presence of light, bonellin is a very effective biocide, killing bacteria, larva of other organisms, and red blood cells in laboratory tests. It is currently being investigated as a possible model for novel antibiotics.

[edit] Green Spoonworm and sexual dimorphism

The same chemical plays a unique role in the worm's sexual differentiation. The planktonic, free-swimming Bonellia larvae are initially sexually undifferentiated. Larvae which land on unoccupied sea-floor mature, over the period of years, into adult females. But most larvae come in contact with the bonellin in the skin of an adult female -- its body or its roving, bonellin-rich proboscis -- and are masculinised by this exposure. The chemical causes these larvae to develop into the tiny males, which cling to the female's body or are sucked inside it by the feeding tube, to spend the remainder of their lives as parasites inside the female's genital sac, producing sperm to fertilize her eggs and reliant on their host for all other needs.

The sex of a Green Spoonworm is thus determined by external, environmental factors (the presence or absence of bonellin), not by internal, genetic factors (chromosomes), as is the case with most other sexually-differentiated organisms. This environmental sex determination helps Green Spoonworm populations respond to the availability of burrows.