NO COMMON NAME ( Paragordius varius): SPECIES ACCOUNT Hair worms are not considered threatened or endangered. Along came Alexander the Great, who sliced through the knot with one stroke of his sword. The Gordian knot was made by a mythical ruler who declared the person who untied it would be the leader of all Asia. For this reason, these worms sometimes are called Gordian worms. Hundreds of worms often can be found in a seemingly undoable tangle. Masses of hair worms form large knots during mating. The crickets and beetles and crabs and shrimp are infected when they eat flies containing hair worm larvae. When these larvae transform into adults, they fly to land, taking the hair worm larvae with them. The worm larvae (LAR-vee) hatch from the eggs and bore into the larvae of water flies. After mating, females lay as many as six million eggs and then die. Some species mate immediately, but others wait a few months. BEHAVIOR AND REPRODUCTIONĪdult hair worms that live in insects emerge from their hosts in late spring or summer. Young worms absorb nutrients from their hosts. In the sea, hair worms live anywhere from beaches to the sea floor.Īdult hair worms do not eat. In streams the worms are either attached to plants hanging over the banks or live between rocks on the bottom. The worms that live in insects usually are found in slow-moving freshwater streams or ponds. The other type lives in insects such as crickets, grasshoppers, and beetles. One type of hair worm lives in sea animals such as crabs and shrimp. Hair worms live all over the world except Antarctica. Young hair worms are parasites (PAIR-eh-sites) and live on or in other animals, or hosts, without helping them and usually harming them, but adults live freely. Some hair worms have raised bumps on their surface. The front end of most of these worms has a white tip with a thin dark band behind it.
They are black, brown, yellow, white, or gray.
Hair worms are long and thin-2 to 118 inches (5 to 300 centimeters) long and 0.02 to 0.4 inch (0.5 to 10 millimeters) wide. HAIR WORMS: Nematomorpha NO COMMON NAME ( Paragordius varius): SPECIES ACCOUNT
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