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"Don't termination it, don't squish it, don't chopped it up," Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller warned residents via NBC arsenic a toxic flatworm spreads crossed North Texas.
While this invasive taxon has been successful the US for years, the state's fatally dense rains, fueled by climate change, are enabling the hammerhead flatworm (Bipalium kewense) to thrive and spread.
This brownish and black-striped, flattened land planarian with a distinctive half-moon-shaped caput tin scope lengths of up to 40 cm (15.7 inches). Like galore flatworm species, it tin regenerate a whole caller worm from slices of itself.
Decapitating the worm volition lone assistance it multiply.
Related: Rare Two-Headed Flatworms Produce Topsy-Turvy Offspring, Scientists Discover
"Tear it successful half, present you've got 2 worms," Miller told NBC's Keenan Willard.
Instead, authorities advise not to interaction the flatworms with bare hands, but wherever it's safe, to spot the worms successful a container and frost them for 48 hours. They're besides asking radical to study sightings of the flatworms to the Texas Invasive Species Institute.
A taxon of hammerhead flatworm connected the move. (Placebo365/Creatas Videa/Getty Images)Native to Southeast Asia, these terrestrial predators thrive successful hot, humid environments, wherever they devour snails and earthworms.
Their fare makes greenhouses perfect homes, allowing the flatworm to often spread done gardening activities and the horticultural industry.
Hammerhead flatworms tin beryllium recovered successful leafage litter, moist mulch, and soil.
"Some, but not each taxon of Bipalium, nutrient a neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin successful their mucus," Virginia Tech entomologist Theresa Dellinger said successful 2023, explaining they don't wound oregon sting.
"The intent of it is to subdue their prey."
The sodium-channel blocker, which is besides recovered successful pufferfish, can, however, irritate the tegument and mucus membranes of humans and pets.
Hammerhead flatworm, Bipalium kewense. (Pierre Gros/Justine et al., Biodiversity and Conservation, 2018)As they're an invasive species, hammerhead flatworms person nary earthy predators successful the US. When conditions are favorable, flatworm numbers tin turn retired of control, starring them to deplete the earthworms that play a large relation successful keeping soils healthy.
"Other animals seldom devour onshore planarians, since aboveground secretions look distasteful, if not toxic," University of Florida nematologists explained successful 2004. "Because of their cannibalistic habit, onshore planarians whitethorn beryllium their ain worst enemy."
The caller dispersed is 1 of galore examples of climate alteration driving the proliferation of invasive species.
