The roots are the working end. Skin cells there carry proton pumps that acidify the surrounding bone surface, dissolving hydroxyapatite and releasing the organic material locked inside. Heterotrophic bacteria housed within the root tissue are thought to process the collagen and lipids, though how nutrients pass from bacteria to worm is still being characterised.
Sexual arrangement is extreme. Females are visible, a few centimetres across including the plume; the males are microscopic, remain in a larval-like state, and dozens to hundreds can live inside a single female's tube. Larval sex appears to be determined by where a larva lands, in the same broad sense as in some other marine worms.
The genus rearranged what was assumed about whale falls. Described from a whale carcass in Monterey Canyon in 2002 and named in 2004, Osedax has since been found on fish and bird bones and in shallow water, and experimentally on cow bone. Whether the group specialised on whale bone or long predates whales, and how it survives between falls, are open questions.