Hello all,
I posted some photos of various marine and freshwater tubes to this list a
couple of years ago when I was working on my field guide to tracks and signs
of invertebrates (http://www.northernnaturalists.com/invert_tracks.html).
The unanimous opinion about the freshwater tubes was that they were the work
of some insect, and that there is no freshwater worm that would construct
tubes of that size. Well, I determined those particular tubes to be the
work of dipseudopsid caddisfly larvae, but this summer I found a colony of
tubes in a puddle under some power lines, and got some photos of the worms
that were living in them:
http://bugguide.net/node/view/479651 (the tubes, projecting ~1.5 cm out of
the sediment)
http://bugguide.net/node/view/479755 (a worm extending from one of the
tubes)
http://bugguide.net/node/view/479650 (a worm extracted from one of the
tubes)
I'm wondering if anyone has ideas about what these worms might be, and also
if anyone would be willing to examine a specimen. I have the worm from the
third photo in alcohol, but it's in bad shape (broken into pieces) and I
would try to collect some more next summer if anyone wanted to take a look.
Thanks for any thoughts,
Charley Eiseman
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