Round Ice: Frozen in Time
The nematode P. kolymaensis As the world heats up let’s turn to animals that cool down. Roundworms, phylum Nematoda, are an unfamiliar group to most folks. Biology 101 students may remember them, though not necessarily fondly. These are one of the wormy phyla, long and skinny, but they are vastly different from the more well-known earthworms, which are in the phylum Annelida, segmented worms. A short aside, in the world of animals, there are many wormlike groups: round worms (Nematoda), segmented worms (Annelida), flatworms (Platyhelminthes), peanut worms (Sipuncula), ribbon worms (Nemertea), horsehair worms (Nematomorpha), Acanthocephala worms, and Priapulid worms, to name a few. Being worm-like is a successful body plan. The Nematode species count is more than 40,000, but that number is far lower than the actual number of species on Earth; so many still to be discovered. They are abundant, found everywhere in large numbers. They are so abundant in soil and in us that a bi...