IUBio

Terrestrial ice worms

Geoff Read gread at actrix.gen.nz
Mon Nov 17 18:27:03 EST 1997


Before the Gulf of Mexico marine 'ice worms' there have been "a number of 
curious records of worms whose natural habitat appears to be snow or ice". 
I  came across an oblique reference to these things a while ago but wasn't 
able to pin down much about them until a correspondent mentioned them 
again recently. That has led me back to look again at Stephenson's 1930 
Oligochaeta monograph, p618-20 - Ice and Glacier worms - where I read that 
on the Malaspina Glacier large numbers of a small black worm, 
Mesenchytraeus solifugus "appear on the surface about four o'clock in the 
afternoon, moving sluggishly about ... but when the sun [once more] 
appears in the morning they again burrow into the snow" (hence the 
solifugus presumably!), and that Mesenchytraeus solifugus var 
rainierensis, "abundant on the higher snowfields and glaciers in early 
summer, evidently passes its entire existence, generation after generation 
in the snow and ice. ... The snow on which it is found has a red colour, 
due to a minute unicellular alga, which may serve as the food of the 
worm." 

If anyone has the details of recent citations for glacier worms or 
knows more about what they do in their rather extreme environment I'd be 
interested to hear from them.

--
   Geoff Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz>

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