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Komarekiona eatoni, or the Kentucky earthworm, is a vulnerable species of nearctic Annelid. K. eatoni is found in the southwestern United States , especially near the Appalachian Mountains , though they range at least northwest to Illinois and northeast to Maryland .
The first body segment (segment number 1) features both the earthworm's mouth and, overhanging the mouth, a fleshy lobe called the prostomium, which seals the entrance when the worm is at rest, but is also used to feel and chemically sense the worm's surroundings. Some species of earthworm can even use the prehensile prostomium to grab and drag ...
Lumbricus terrestris is a large, reddish worm species thought to be native to Western Europe, now widely distributed around the world (along with several other lumbricids). In some areas where it is an introduced species , some people consider it to be a significant pest for out-competing native worms.
Oligochaetes are well-segmented worms and most have a spacious body cavity (coelom) used as a hydroskeleton.They range in length from less than 0.5 mm (0.02 in) up to 2 to 3 metres (6.6 to 9.8 ft) in the 'giant' species such as the giant Gippsland earthworm (Megascolides australis) and the Mekong worm (Amynthas mekongianus).
Both male and female reproductive organs are present in earthworms because they are monoecious. To breed, two earthworms exchange sperm. Long after they are separated, the egg case is secreted. It forms a ring around the worm, then the worm removes the ring from its body and injects its own eggs and the other worm's sperm into it.
There are over 22,000 living annelid species, [6] [7] ranging in size from microscopic to the Australian giant Gippsland earthworm and Amynthas mekongianus, which can both grow up to 3 meters (9.8 ft) long [7] [8] [9] to the largest annelid, Microchaetus rappi which can grow up to 6.7 m (22 ft).
The New Zealand earthworm was first described by Frank Evers Beddard in 1885. [1] It is the type-species and type-genus of Octochaetidae, a family of earthworms mainly confined to the Australasian region, with the long anticipated "missing-link" between octochaetids in New Zealand and India found recently with Octochaetus ambrosensis (Blakemore, 1997) and its allied taxa in Australia.
They are also often the numerically dominant earthworm species in England, especially in neutral to base-rich grasslands and arable soils. [9] Because Allolobophora chlorotica is an endogeic worm, it builds complex lateral burrow systems through all layers of the upper mineral soil. This species of worm rarely comes to the surface, instead it ...