Researchers observe the bizarre sexual behavior of shipworms for the first time
One afternoon, a researcher walked into his lab at Northeastern’s Marine Science Center and saw something shocking: A competitive sexual frenzy was happening right before his eyes, with individuals wrestling and sparring for dominance. The participants? A cluster of shipworms, whose unique sexual behavior is “basically unknown in bivalves,” says Dan Distel, who directs the Ocean Genome Legacy Center at Northeastern’s Marine Science Center.
