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Can anyone identify this worm???

PostPosted: Mar 26, 2007 9:45 am
by MUD
Is there anyone out there who may have an answer for me? Never saw anything like it...they're only found in this cave and not the ones close by.

Image

The finger is for scale....they seem to slither along a cobweb and can "turn around" on top of themselves. They're sort of transparent on one end. They are tube shaped, not flat. What do y'all think???


Image

PostPosted: Mar 26, 2007 9:19 pm
by John Lovaas
I know them by the common name of "monorail worms".

There was a recent article about them in the Journal of Cave and Karst Studies- here's a link to the article-

http://www.caves.org/pub/journal/PDF/V6 ... Swayne.pdf

jl

PostPosted: Mar 26, 2007 11:51 pm
by tropicalbats
Seems more like larvae of a fungus gnat. These are predatory, turn into small flies, and are related to the glow-worms in a famous NZ cave.

Keith

PostPosted: Mar 27, 2007 11:01 am
by tlong_geo

PostPosted: Mar 27, 2007 12:52 pm
by John Lovaas
Sorry about the mistaken URL.

I could have sworn there was something about those fly larvae in that article of Pop's Cave- they occur there, I have been told.

So that's what I meant to say- har! Little webworms that are fly larvae.

There is spectacular footage of glow worms in action in the BBC/Discovery Channel Planet Earth "Caves" feature.

Or at least I think they are glow worms. Sigh. ;-)

jl