This is an excellent question, and one (I must say) I don't believe we have enough study yet to give a definative answer to.
IME- Coco worms usually have comparatively longer lifespands in the reef aquaria than their soft tubed cousins...
Most of the family of feather dusters are benthic living creatures in the wild and therefore are fed considerably higher amounts of food than available in the averaged closed system....
This rather hardy invert may actually suffer from an extreme lack of dietary needs that would lend support to the idea that these inverts eventually die from starvation and not due to their age.?,
Due to the lack of overlapping, wild, lifespand studies of these worms it is difficult to tell wether we are prolonging their life in captive reefs of shortening them....
If a feather duster sheads its head feathers (for whatever reason) and it grows back within a month....And the head feathers are smaller than the original duster head- this is a tell-tell sign of malnutrician and steps to up the dusters food uptake need to be addressed.
This may actually be a good Thesis study for postgraduate work?????
