One earthworm can look pretty much like another but even to an expert a greenish worm that moves like a snake was a shock to see in Windsor.
Two of the 12 new species to Canada discovered during the June Ojibway Prairie Complex Bioblitz were 10 to 15 centimetre-long Asian earthworms that have made their way to the United States and now to Canada.
Moth expert John Reynolds. (Courtesy of John Reynolds)
“I never dreamed that I find these. It was a real, real surprise. They’ve never been recorded in Canada,” Kitchener researcher and earthworm expert John Reynolds said Thursday.
Most experts at these bioblitzes where volunteers try to find as many species as they can in 24 hours don’t know exactly what they have until they analyze the specimens in a lab. Reynolds said there was still some dissection and identification involved but he knew right away they were worms from Asia that get transplanted around North America because people buy worms by the pound for composting. He had found amynthas agrestis and amynthas hilgendorfi which had previously been found as north as Vermont.
On their first try, volunteers at the Ojibway Prairie Complex Bioblitz found 1,120 species including the two worms, eight spiders and two beetles that had never been recorded before in Canada. As if that wasn’t wild enough, organizers want to do it again in July and aim for a world record for most species.
“It’s very exciting,” said Tom Preney, vice-president of the Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club which held the blitz. “I think it’s one of those things where it just goes to show you how biodiverse this region is when there’s new species still turning up.”
He said volunteers still could find some new species to Canada and need fungi and fly experts to come for a July 18 and 19 count.
“It’s basically like a living snapshot of the biodiversity found in this region,” said Preney who is a naturalist at the Ojibway Nature Centre. “Twelve is a number that we’re very excited we accomplished it because no other bioblitz to date in Ontario has discovered so many new species to Canada.”
Plants topped the list of Ojibway species found at 483 and volunteers collected 351 insects and 129 spiders including eight new ones for Canada.
The two beetles that had never been found here were identified by Bruce Gill of Ottawa who is a past president of the Entomological Society of Ontario. He said one is a native longhorn beetle from the United States and the other is a small chafer beetle called nipponoserica peregrina. It came from Japan to the United States before 1937 when it was first believed to be a native species and is much less troublesome than the European chafer and white grubs that damage lawns.
moth called a straight-lined mallow which is the first of its kind found in Ontario and only the second time the moth has been found in Canada.
“Over a 24-hour period when you pull together a bunch of biologists we’re still uncovering things we didn’t even know we had in our own backyard,” Gill said.
The 1,120 total is still rising. The latest was a moth called a straight-lined mallow which is the first of its kind found in Ontario and only the second time the moth has been found in Canada.
The Essex County Field Naturalists’ Club will be inviting volunteers to meet at Ojibway July 18 and 19 to try to set a record or at least beat the Canadian record of 1,791 species at Rouge Park in Toronto. They had 500 participants and 200 experts and Preney said the Ojibway count had 100 volunteers and 30 experts on its first try.
The record could be a bioblitz done with the National Geographic Society and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy last year with 2,304 species.
