Picture of the Week, Red and White Coco Worm

By: Brandon Klaus

In this week’s AquaNerd Picture of the Week, we turn our attention to a beautiful and often underrated invertebrate, the Coco worm. These gorgeous tube worms excrete a hard, calcified tube, which they live in for protection. Their elaborate gills, seen in the image above, are obviously the worm’s most striking feature, as it isn’t just colorful but can also move in and out of the tube with a great deal of velocity. When danger approaches, the worm quickly retreats into tube, only to slowly and timidly creep back out when the danger has passed.