Menzies Bay Smiling Worm (Antiponemertes allisonae)
This species is a terrestrial ribbon worm, about 1 cm long and about 0.1 cm wide, with a brown mottled upper surface and relatively large eyes.
Apparently, this ribbon worm has always lived in only one place, Menzies Bay on the Banks Peninsula on New Zealand’s South Island. There the worm was found under fallen tree- or tree fern trunks, in places that were neither too wet nor too dry.
The species’ former habitat has now been largely destroyed by deforestation but also by intensive grazing by sheep, which are omnipresent in New Zealand, as well as by introduced deer.
Searches, most recently in 1988, yielded no results.
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syn. Geonemertes allisonae Moore
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edited: 25.10.2011
Tag Archives: Prosorhochmidae
Prosadenoporus agricola (Willemoes-Suhm)
Bermudas Terrestrial Smiling Worm (Prosadenoporus agricola)
The Bermudas Terrestrial Smiling Worm was described in 1874, it was restricted to the Bermudas Islands.
The milky-white, brownish or greenish colored species was commonly found along the shores of mangrove swamps, under stones and logs on moist, silty soil or inside earthworm burrows above the high-water mark and, during the wet season, also on adjacent hillsides.
The former habitat of this species is now completely lost due to commercial development.
Some very few last survivors – the last of their kind – were found during intensive field searches in 1966, since then the species is considered extinct. [1]
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(public domain)
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References:
[1] Svetlana A. Maslakova; Jon L. Norenburg: Revision of the smiling worms, genera Prosadenoporus Burger, 1890 and Pantinonemertes Moore and Gibson, 1981 and description of a new species Prosadenoporus floridensis sp. nov. (Prosorhochmidae; Hoplonemertea; Nemertea) from Florida and Belize. Journal of Natural History 42: 25-26. 2008
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edited: 03.11.2020