There's plenty of creepy, crawly stuff in the soil, and organisms such as worms, snails and slugs are essential to the planet's health.
But flatworms, a subset of creepy creatures that feed on those soil dwellers and gobble up biodiversity in the process, are a threat to the world's dirt. Now, scientists have identified two new species of the alien-appearing animals - and named one after covid-19.
It's called Humbertium covidum, and although the specimens studied were found in France and Italy, it may also be in China, Japan and Russia.
In an article in the journal PeerJ, the researchers say it's unclear where they originated. That's a big problem with flatworms, which are thought to make their way into the soil of different continents via the global plant trade.
The black, slick, hammer-headed, metallic-looking worm is relatively tiny (a little over an inch long), but it has the potential to become invasive. Flatworms' feeding frenzy allows them to outcompete many other soil animals, making the dirt less fertile and stable. One 2012 study estimated that New Zealand flatworms Arthurdendyus triangulatus killed 20 percent of some earthworm populations in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Researchers say they named the newly identified hammerhead flatworm after covid-19 as a nod to the pandemic that enabled the research.
"Due to the pandemic, during the lockdowns most of us were home, with our laboratory closed," said Jean-Lou Justine, a professor at the National Museum of National History in Paris, in a news release. "No field expeditions were possible. I convinced my colleagues to gather all the information we had about these flatworms, do the computer analyses, and finally write this very long paper."
Justine said the name was also intended to pay tribute to the coronavirus's victims.
The other species, Diversibipalium mayottensis, is a shimmering shade of blue-green. It's not clear how it made its way to the island of Mayotte, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, but the researchers say it may have come from Mozambique.
The Washington Post