Post by dividavi on May 24, 2022 8:09:24 GMT
Voracious Jumping Worms That Leap A Foot Found In California
Gardeners beware: an invasive, thrashing worm that's every bit as destructive to the soil as the earthworm is helpful, is here.
Paige Austin's profile picture
Paige Austin,
Patch Staff
Verified Patch Staff Badge
Posted Sat, May 14, 2022 at 11:04 pm PT
|https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/voracious-jumping-worms-leap-foot-found-california
Updated Sun, May 15, 2022 at 8:02 pm PT
Scientists are worried about the spread of the invasive Asian jumping worm species whose acrobatics burn a lot of energy. These voracious eaters chew through the dead plant matter that provides nutrients soils need for plants to grow.
Scientists are worried about the spread of the invasive Asian jumping worm species whose acrobatics burn a lot of energy. These voracious eaters chew through the dead plant matter that provides nutrients soils need for plants to grow. (Shutterstock / Jeffrey Dorwart)
CALIFORNIA — Earthworms are a gardener's best friend, but an imposter and invasive species known to deplete nutrients from the soil has now been detected in 34 states including California.
The jumping earthworm gobbles nutrients from the soil, leaving it barren and unable to sustain forests. It's been newly confirmed in the Golden State, and residents are being warned to watch out for the voracious little thrashing worms. They are capable of edging earthworms out of their native habitats and doing serious damage to forest ecosystems.
These invasive Asian jumping worms — their scientific name is Amynthas agrestis — earn their nickname and their reputation. They're also called Alabama jumpers, Jersey wrigglers, wood eel, crazy worms, snake worms and crazy snake worms.
Their common names are descriptive of "the way they thrash around," USDA Forest Service soil scientist Mac Callaham said in a post last month on the agency's website. "They can flip themselves a foot off the ground."
Beneficial earthworms aerate the soil and help prep it for growth. But once jumping worms have had their way in your dirt, it will have the consistency of coffee grounds — and be about as useful for growing things as the dredges from the morning pot of joe.
An entomologist conducted DNA sequencing to confirm the first finding of a jumping worm last year in Napa County.
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, "It is likely that Amynthas agrestis will be able to establish a widespread distribution through California's forest habitat and ornamental production sites, particularly in residential and commercial environments."
They could become a real problem for the Golden State.
"Amynthas agrestis poses a serious threat primarily to California's forests. However,
they may also be detrimental to commercial ornamental nurseries due to the presence of the pest in field and containerized plants that may be distributed to residential and commercial gardens and parks," according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. "The worms can deplete thick layers of leaf litter that serve as rooting media thereby, disrupting the natural decomposition of leaf litter on forest floors and turning the soil into grainy, dry worm castings that cannot support understory forest plants... Once they are established, they are impossible to eradicate.
Jumping-worm populations grow quickly through a couple of generations a season. Like other worms, they're hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs, but with a distinction: Jumping worms reproduce on their own.
They Engineer Their Own Ecosystems
Jumping worms are wreaking havoc with soil and, ultimately, the circle of life, Callaham told Sarah Farmer, a science writer for the Forest Service's Southern Research Station in Asheville, North Carolina.
Jumping worms expend a lot of energy, which they fuel by eating everything in their path. That includes leaf litter, the first layer of soil on the forest floor — home not only many unseen tiny creatures but also an important source of nutrients plants need to sprout and grow.
All earthworms feed on leaf litter, but jumping worms are "voracious," Callaham said.
"Soil is the foundation of life — and Asian jumping worms change that," the soil scientist continued. "In fact, earthworms can have such huge impacts that they're able to actually engineer the ecosystems around them."
It's a conundrum for scientists, who say they need to learn more about the ecology of jumping worms before prescribing a management plan. The intelligence on them so far by about two dozen scientists was collected last year in a research paper detailing the second wave of jumping worm infestation in North America.
"We cannot really manage them once they are here," Andrea Davalos, an assistant professor of biology at State University of New York-Cortland and one of the authors of the research paper, told Upstate New York.
"There's no appropriate method to get rid of them," said Davalos, who also is a member of New York's Jumping Worm Outreach, Research & Management collaborative.
What Davalos and others have found in New York is that while jumping worms are widespread from Long Island to Ontario, Canada, their colonies are "very patchy." A colony of up to 30 jumping worms can live in a 2.6-square-foot garden plot, but a similarly sized space nearby may have none.
'Forestry-Wise, It's Disastrous'
Maine state horticulturalist Gary Fish told NECN, an NBC affiliate serving the Northeast, said his office has seen the number of reports of jumping worms increasing over the past five years and that their spread has been "a problem across the whole Northeast."
"Forestry-wise," he told NECN, "I would say it's disastrous."
Of particular risk, he said, are the maple trees in Vermont used to make syrup, and others used for wood products such as ash.
Similar stories emerge elsewhere across the country.
"Because of their ability to clone themselves, just one jumping worm can start a population, which makes them a different species to manage," Ryan Hueffmeier, an ecologist, environmentalist and professor in University Of Minnesota Duluth's College of Education and Human Service Professions, told KSMP, a Fox News affiliate in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Patch Staffer Beth Dalbey contributed to this report.
Gardeners beware: an invasive, thrashing worm that's every bit as destructive to the soil as the earthworm is helpful, is here.
Paige Austin's profile picture
Paige Austin,
Patch Staff
Verified Patch Staff Badge
Posted Sat, May 14, 2022 at 11:04 pm PT
|https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/voracious-jumping-worms-leap-foot-found-california
Updated Sun, May 15, 2022 at 8:02 pm PT
Scientists are worried about the spread of the invasive Asian jumping worm species whose acrobatics burn a lot of energy. These voracious eaters chew through the dead plant matter that provides nutrients soils need for plants to grow.
Scientists are worried about the spread of the invasive Asian jumping worm species whose acrobatics burn a lot of energy. These voracious eaters chew through the dead plant matter that provides nutrients soils need for plants to grow. (Shutterstock / Jeffrey Dorwart)
CALIFORNIA — Earthworms are a gardener's best friend, but an imposter and invasive species known to deplete nutrients from the soil has now been detected in 34 states including California.
The jumping earthworm gobbles nutrients from the soil, leaving it barren and unable to sustain forests. It's been newly confirmed in the Golden State, and residents are being warned to watch out for the voracious little thrashing worms. They are capable of edging earthworms out of their native habitats and doing serious damage to forest ecosystems.
These invasive Asian jumping worms — their scientific name is Amynthas agrestis — earn their nickname and their reputation. They're also called Alabama jumpers, Jersey wrigglers, wood eel, crazy worms, snake worms and crazy snake worms.
Their common names are descriptive of "the way they thrash around," USDA Forest Service soil scientist Mac Callaham said in a post last month on the agency's website. "They can flip themselves a foot off the ground."
Beneficial earthworms aerate the soil and help prep it for growth. But once jumping worms have had their way in your dirt, it will have the consistency of coffee grounds — and be about as useful for growing things as the dredges from the morning pot of joe.
An entomologist conducted DNA sequencing to confirm the first finding of a jumping worm last year in Napa County.
According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, "It is likely that Amynthas agrestis will be able to establish a widespread distribution through California's forest habitat and ornamental production sites, particularly in residential and commercial environments."
They could become a real problem for the Golden State.
"Amynthas agrestis poses a serious threat primarily to California's forests. However,
they may also be detrimental to commercial ornamental nurseries due to the presence of the pest in field and containerized plants that may be distributed to residential and commercial gardens and parks," according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. "The worms can deplete thick layers of leaf litter that serve as rooting media thereby, disrupting the natural decomposition of leaf litter on forest floors and turning the soil into grainy, dry worm castings that cannot support understory forest plants... Once they are established, they are impossible to eradicate.
Jumping-worm populations grow quickly through a couple of generations a season. Like other worms, they're hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs, but with a distinction: Jumping worms reproduce on their own.
They Engineer Their Own Ecosystems
Jumping worms are wreaking havoc with soil and, ultimately, the circle of life, Callaham told Sarah Farmer, a science writer for the Forest Service's Southern Research Station in Asheville, North Carolina.
Jumping worms expend a lot of energy, which they fuel by eating everything in their path. That includes leaf litter, the first layer of soil on the forest floor — home not only many unseen tiny creatures but also an important source of nutrients plants need to sprout and grow.
All earthworms feed on leaf litter, but jumping worms are "voracious," Callaham said.
"Soil is the foundation of life — and Asian jumping worms change that," the soil scientist continued. "In fact, earthworms can have such huge impacts that they're able to actually engineer the ecosystems around them."
It's a conundrum for scientists, who say they need to learn more about the ecology of jumping worms before prescribing a management plan. The intelligence on them so far by about two dozen scientists was collected last year in a research paper detailing the second wave of jumping worm infestation in North America.
"We cannot really manage them once they are here," Andrea Davalos, an assistant professor of biology at State University of New York-Cortland and one of the authors of the research paper, told Upstate New York.
"There's no appropriate method to get rid of them," said Davalos, who also is a member of New York's Jumping Worm Outreach, Research & Management collaborative.
What Davalos and others have found in New York is that while jumping worms are widespread from Long Island to Ontario, Canada, their colonies are "very patchy." A colony of up to 30 jumping worms can live in a 2.6-square-foot garden plot, but a similarly sized space nearby may have none.
'Forestry-Wise, It's Disastrous'
Maine state horticulturalist Gary Fish told NECN, an NBC affiliate serving the Northeast, said his office has seen the number of reports of jumping worms increasing over the past five years and that their spread has been "a problem across the whole Northeast."
"Forestry-wise," he told NECN, "I would say it's disastrous."
Of particular risk, he said, are the maple trees in Vermont used to make syrup, and others used for wood products such as ash.
Similar stories emerge elsewhere across the country.
"Because of their ability to clone themselves, just one jumping worm can start a population, which makes them a different species to manage," Ryan Hueffmeier, an ecologist, environmentalist and professor in University Of Minnesota Duluth's College of Education and Human Service Professions, told KSMP, a Fox News affiliate in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Patch Staffer Beth Dalbey contributed to this report.
