Early bird better be hungry
A possibly new species of worm makes itself at home on the A.T.
A curious worm has been discovered in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on the North Carolina-Tennessee line. And, get this: It’s 18 inches long. So far, scientists are 90 percent sure it’s a species they’ve never seen before. ”That doesn’t mean that it’s turned up suddenly or it’s newly created,” says Dr. Sam James, the worm expert trying to identify the stretch limo of the night crawler world. “It simply hasn’t been noticed by scientists before.” One reason might be the height at which it lives. All five of the specimens James has studied were found at elevations of 5,500 to 6,000 feet. People who live in the mountains have probably seen them before, he says. “But it’s an earthworm, so nobody pays much attention.” An Appalachian Trail volunteer discovered the first one in the spring of 1998. He tucked it into his pack, but didn’t hike off the mountain for a couple of days. So it was in pretty bad shape when it arrived at James’ office in Iowa, which is one reason he isn’t yet certain if the species is new. He does know this about the worm: It looks pretty much like your garden variety. It’s a little less thick than your average pencil, a little paler than your average worm and wields a slightly bulbous tail. And, in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not all that long. Some of the 4,000 species of earthworms crawling under the world’s feet grow up to 10 feet or more. Those live in Australia, South Africa and South America. One of the biggest in the United States wriggles around Texas, of course, all 2½ feet of it. In the past 18 months, four more of the worms have been found along the Appalachian Trail and park officials have sent them off to James. They were immature worms though, only about a foot long, and without the sex organs James needs to confirm that they truly belong to a new species. So park employees and volunteers are gearing up for spring, when heavy rains will force the wrigglers out of the ground and James can validate the discovery. If it is a new species, it’ll be up to James to name it. His choice? ”The guy who collected the first individual that came to me was curious to know if it could be named for his grandfather,” James says. “And I’d do that for him, if the name isn’t already taken.”
