Why should I care about polychaetes?
Our understanding of how the oceans operate and affect our very existence is dependent upon understanding the diversity of life in all ocean habitats. For instance, marine biologists monitoring the health of a particular region must rely on knowing what species occur in a given area and the role they play in the ecosystem. If we scoop up mud or sand from the sea floor on any part of the planet, regardless of depth, we find that polychaetes are usually the dominant organisms. As a consequence, marine biologists have found polychaetes to be excellent indicators of the effects of pollutants, as well as pointing to natural and human-induced changes in ecosystems. In order to accurately monitor the health of the world’s oceans, marine biologists must be able to correctly identify the organisms they encounter. This is one of the reasons that the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County maintains one of the world’s largest polychaete collections, and why the collection receives so much us
