bristle worm

noun

variants or less commonly bristleworm

ˈbri-səl-ˌwərm

plural bristle worms also bristleworms

: any of a class (Polychaeta) of aquatic and chiefly marine annelid worms (such as clam worms or lugworms) that usually possess paired segmental appendages bearing many bristles, that produce free-swimming larvae, and that are often brightly colored or bioluminescent : polychaete

Last week, researchers with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences helped solve the mystery and identified the creatures as polychaete worms. … They are known as "bristle worms" because of their thick bunches of seta that resemble hair …—

Dolan Reynolds

For the past 11,000 years, a species of marine bristle worm has been building reefs. … The worms secrete a mucous tube, then set grains of sand and shell into the mucous, which hardens like mortar.—

Carolyn Fretz

Examples of bristle worm in a Sentence

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The Vanadis Worm: A Marvel of Marine Biology Vanadis bristle worms, also known as polychaetes, live on the Italian island of Ponza, just west of Naples. —

Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 11 Apr. 2024 Recently, however, in a study published in Nature Communications, researchers in Germany determined the different structures that one such protein in bristle worms takes in darkness and in sunlight. —

Elise Cutts, Quanta Magazine, 19 Dec. 2023 The bristle worm hormones that swing in sync with lunar phases have close cousins in humans, Tessmar-Raible said. —

Elise Cutts, Quanta Magazine, 19 Dec. 2023