Members of this family live in tubes made of sand and shell fragments. The head of the worm does not bear a proboscis but has the mouth at the tip rimmed by some very short tentacles.

Selective filter feeders, detritivores and grazers.

Family members are unique in having a bell-shaped larval stage known as a mitraria larva.

http://www.annelida.net/nz/Polychaeta/Family/F-Oweniidae.htm accessed 17/02/14