Stella Atkinson sees plenty of sights on her early morning walks, but she wasn’t prepared for a moving mass of worms crossing the gravel road near her farm in central Alberta.
Atkinson thought the mass was an old snakeskin lying on the road. Instead she saw thousands of one-millimetre-long worms shaped into a snake crawling across the road. On a second early morning walk in July, she saw five batches of the worms migrating across the road between canola fields. That day she brought along her camera so people wouldn’t think she was losing her mind.
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The strange migrating worms have since been identified as the larvae of a species of dusky-winged fungus gnat. While rare, such migrations have been seen around the world, and are sometimes referred to as army worms.
It’s not the first time Atkinson saw the rope of worms. About five years ago she saw them on the road near her home at Three Hills. That time she took a sample to the local county office for identification. No one seemed too interested in her worms and she didn’t know how to pursue it further.
This time she called some neighbours to watch the phenomenon.
“There were four old guys with their bums in the air looking at the worms,” said Atkinson.
She also sent the pictures to her neighbour, Don Boles, to help with identification. Boles forwarded the photos to a variety of agriculture officials. The photos were posted on an internet bug site operated by University of Alberta entomologist Felix Sperling. Derek Sikes, curator of the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North, identified the larvae.
Sikes became intrigued with the larvae after he heard of seven sightings of the migrating gnat last July near Fairbanks, Alaska.
“It’s a complicated mystery. Nobody knows why they migrate,” said Sikes, who believes Atkinson’s sighting is the first time the marching larvae have been seen in an agriculture setting.
“It’s very strange they’re in an agriculture location. I’ve never heard of that before,” said Sikes.
Little is know about the sciara larvae. They are from a family of fungus eaters and are common in mushroom farms and potted plants. It’s unlikely the larvae or the adult fly are a danger to canola crops, but were taking advantage of the moist canopy.
According to Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia, processions of up to 10 metres, containing thousands of individuals, have been seen over the years migrating through central Europe.
Atkinson said one batch of migrating worms was a metre and a half long, but the others were around 45 centimetres and all crawling in a northwestly direction. She estimated the mass could move about three cm an hour and before the day was done would have dried out from the hot sun.
Using a piece of brome grass, Atkinson and her neighbours tried lifting the rope of worms, but the worms broke apart and frantically wiggled to get back into formation.
Next spring an entomologist plans to place sticky insect paper across the road to catch some of the larvae for study, she said.
“I think I’ve opened a can of worms.”
