Howard V. Hendrix, The Labyrinth Key, New York, Ballantine Books, 2004, p.172. 

In the aquariums lived caddisworms, the aquatic larvae of the caddis fly.

These larvae took whatever they could manipulate in their local environment and, with a silken substance, glued it together into a protective case for their soft bodies. In the wild, their “found objects” were usually things like pine needles, leaf debris, sand, or shells. The biologist-artists had put the wormlike larvae in tanks lined with among other things, precious and semiprecious jewels, computer chips, glitter, small snails, confetti-sized fabric, swatches in myriad colors, household debris, bits of mirror, even tiny plasticized words and images.

The caddisworms dutifully encased themselves in these various material, moving jerkily about in their odd little armored houses.