
Parchment Tubeworms
Chaetopteridae
The Chaetopteridae are a family of marine filter-feeding polychaete worms that live in vertical or U-shaped tubes in tunnels buried in the sedimentary or hard substrate of marine environments. The worms are highly adapted to the hard tube they secrete. Inside the tube the animal is segmented and regionally specialized, with highly modified appendages on different segments for cutting the tunnel, feeding, or creating suction for the flow of water through the tube home. The modified...
4 branches of this family, most-observed first

Chaetopterus
genusChaetopterus
Spiochaetopterus
genusSpiochaetopterus

Phyllochaetopterus
genusPhyllochaetopterus

Mesochaetopterus
genusMesochaetopterus
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Chaetopteridae in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 130244.