About two hundred years ago, an impoverished Frenchman also stared at the feathery tentacles and the tough tubes of these marine worms. The French Revolution was throwing his world into chaos. His position as botanist at the Royal Gardens disappeared in the amalgamation which created the Museum of Natural History in Paris.

Now he was the official professor of insects and worms, of which he knew nothing. The day came that he was to make some sense of this particular creature. It was another one of these ‘lower animals’ in his care.
When I say ‘this is a species of Galeolaria’, I am using this Frenchman’s name for it. When I add that it is an Annelid, a segmented worm, an Invertebrate, an animal without a backbone – I am using all the words that the same man first used when he organised this classification.

The man was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Perhaps his specimen came to him from the good ship Géographe captained by Nicolas Baudin, commissioned by Napoleon himself. The scientific voyage charted 600 new kilometres of Australian coastline, collecting flora and fauna. My specimen came from the lower side of the rocks on Main Beach in Byron Bay.

The tentacles gently wave, helping the animal breathe as well as to catch small foodstuffs from the water. When disturbed by even a shadow passing over, the tentacles are pulled into its tube. A tough little cap, complete with spikes, is pulled down hard and seals the worm inside.

Male and female, Galeolaria live on rocks at about the mid tide level. Sometimes the numbers are great and the worm tubes crowd together, forming thick crusts. Found always south of the tropics, it is nicknamed Sydney coral.
The adults broadcast eggs and sperm year round, though more so over the summer months. Most fertilisation occurs within the first two hours.

Lamarck called the study of life ‘biology’. In this world, these worms and others of their group are classic subjects of interest. Since the late 1700s, the dissections, their drawings and their labeling, have been precision works of art, requiring care, good microscopes and delicate instruments.
This group of Annelids is called Polychaetes because of their many fine bristles. The number and arrangement of these bristles is one of the distinguishing characteristics between the species.

This particular ‘family’ of bristle worms in tubes, the Serpulids, is also prized because their entire life cycle can be observed in the lab. Removed from their tubes, the little worms are sorted by sex into two dishes. The sperm from the males is collected and added to the dish with females.
Using microscopes, the process of fertilisation and the timing of hatching can be observed in detail. The growth of the larvae itself can be tracked through its curious development. Are there, I wonder, songs of the small sea worms creating?

This is a moment for one.
Because of lab work, we know that the three forms of the larvae are all the one animal. Each form is so unlike, seeing these only in the sea – who would guess?
Unlike the immobilised adults, each larval form lives freely in the sea. Each feeds on plants and animals of sizes specific to its own stage. The young are grow up in their own zones, eat their own type of food, and take their own chances.
The larvae are remarkably sensitive. They are sometimes used as indicators of water quality because of their death rates in differing concentrations of effluent. They also have a fine sense of smell and will settle ‘back home’ in preference to other areas.

They also have skill as swimmers, selecting their own places in the depths and currents of the sea. At their size, 350 micrometres (10mm-6mm) maximum, even the viscosity of the water is another challenge for them.

Within their busily developing selves, there is a special set of genes, a recipe book for arranging various regions of the body. This combination of genes is known as a homeobox. One is called Hox and dates from 540 million years ago.  It’s unique to multicellular life, more specifically to animal life. The genes are read one after another, at set times, directing the embryonic organism development from head to tail. Change the reading or timing and the final adult form is altered, mutated or maybe enhanced.

Back in the lab again, variations of the homeobox genes and the proteins they make, appear again and again in Lamarck’s ‘worms and insects’. The Hox genes were common knowledge in the fruit fly genetic studies of the early twentieth century. But in 1983, Hox genes were found in a frog. This initiated a new branch of science: evolutionary development or ‘evo-devo’ for short. The ‘recipe’ for organising heads, trunks and tails is also used by fish, reptiles, birds and us.

Lamarck’s name shows up in brackets after Galeolaria every time it is formally documented in a scientific paper. Most recently, in July 2009, a team from Adelaide assessed the genes of this worm across its entire range, from south Queensland to Western Australia. They make a case for splitting Galeolaria into two species: G. gemineoa now as well as G. caespitosa.

Eventually, this may get approved and logged online in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRM). This site lists almost 230,000 species ‘known to science’.  A team at the University of Tasmania sends an email promising to post me their CD guide to marine larvae. Soon they start sampling right up the east coast. Maybe we will meet when they reach here.

But now for another snorkel. Into that living fertile sea, bordered by Galeolaria. Thanks to Lamarck, you know exactly what I mean.