tickman

Some interesting tidbits about this organism.

1) Live specimens of C. elegans in petri dishes were carried into space by the space shuttle Columbia in January of 2003. The Columbia crashed on its February 1 return. Weeks later, some of the canisters carrying the petri dishes were found. Some of the C. elgans were still alive.

2) C. elegans has two sexual forms: males and hermaphrodites (which have both male and female organs). Hermaphrodites make up the vast majority of the species. Only 0.05% are males. There are no true females.

3) These nematodes have 4 larval stages. In times of stress (especially starvation), the larvae may enter an alternative 3rd stage, the dauer larva. These larvae neither feed nor age, and may survive many times the normal length of a C. elegans lifespan. When conditions improve, they come out of the dauer state, and continue their development.

1 year ago

tickman

For more about C. elegans (and the image used here), see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_elegans

For the image alone, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C_elegans_anatomy.png

The image s licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Details:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

If you really want to get into C. elegans anatomy, go here:

http://www.wormatlas.org/

1 year ago