It might appear to be a snake, however don’t fear, it’s only a mass procession of “snakeworms.” (Is that higher?) Not less than, that’s what Derek Sikes, a professor of entomology on the College of Alaska Fairbanks, calls them.
These snakeworms are actually a kind of dusky-winged fungus gnat larvae. They migrate en masse, climbing over one another and forming a snake-like tube. Somebody noticed one in all these snakeworm migrations this week in Fairbanks, Alaska.
In keeping with Alaska Public Media, the primary report of those “uncommon traces of transferring gnat larvae” in Fairbanks was in 2007. Sikes informed the information outlet that there have been “sporadic sightings” within the years since then.
Sikes and different researchers revealed a paper about “snakeworm” fungus gnats on the finish of final yr. The authors put forth that these gnats, which kind larval lots that transfer in snake-like columns, represented a brand new species—Sciara serpens.
Within the paper, the authors cite reviews from Pennsylvania within the 1860s of larval lots that appear to be a “skinny gray snake.” Clearly, these gnats have been forming bizarre larval-snake processions for some time now, however nobody appeared intently sufficient to comprehend they have been really an unrecognized species.
Study extra on Sikes’s college web page right here.
Header picture courtesy of Jenna Hamm by way of Alaska Public Media
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