Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Jumping worms, also known as snake worms
It sounds like a rock group from the past but it's no joke. Jumping worms are an invasive Asian species and a friend of mine has found them in her beautiful, carefully tended for decades garden.
Evidently they've been around for over a century, now they're spreading to forested areas where they are altering the ecosystem.
These worms feed on the upper layers of forest litter and they are insatiable. They out compete native earthworms and leave the soil depleted, to the disadvantage of native growth.
As if the current regime weren't bad enough--these guys could be their mascots.
A good article on these critters is HERE.
4 comments:
They have been the subject of discussion at Garden Club. A presenter from the County Extension service downplayed any concern about these worms when he was asked about them. I don't know if I have them or not.
Our whole country is besieged by invasive alien species. In the DC area, a very bad problem is invasive vines that completely cover miles and miles of trees along the Beltway and other major roads. The trees are dead, smothered and reduced to props for the vines. Nothing is being done about it. The dead trees will eventually collapse into roadways in windstorms or ice storms. I hate the sight of the huge mounds of deadly green smothering everything in sight. I feel like crying every time I see long stretches of that
I once heard that even our native worms are not really native, but I have never followed that up.
The more we get to be global, the more invasions we invite. Some worse than others! Here there's an endless battle against Himalayan Balsam which is pretty but overtakes everything else.
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