[1] C. briggsae is frequently used to study the differences between it and the more intimately understood C. elegans, especially at the DNA and protein sequence level.

The first individuals were isolated from a pile of leaves found on the Palo Alto campus of Stanford University.

Briggs' initial work with the organism looked at its lifecycle in various kinds of media in the presence and absence of bacteria.

[6] C. briggsae can often be found in compost, garden beds, moist mushrooms, or rotting fruit rich with microorganisms and various nutrients.

C. briggsae is a soil nematode estimated to have diverged from C. elegans around 80–100 million years ago, and yet is morphologically almost indistinguishable from it.

Areas of similarity between the sequences of the two organisms can suggest coding exons or point to regulatory regions and to RNA genes missed in standard analysis.