Australoplana sanguinea
Size: 2 to 10 cm long, 2 to 5 mm wide. This flatworm is orange or peach coloured with a pink front end it is long and thin and slightly flattened, more so when at rest.
Good quality photograph required please.
A soil dwelling creature which may turn up in parks and gardens.
All year round.
Feeds on earthworms. Reproduction is mostly by fission, worms breaking in two and both parts regenerating into whole worms.
First identified in the UK in 1981, a specimen found in Tresco, Isles of Scilly. Origin probably Australia. It now seems to be spreading across England.
Believed to be new to Leicestershire and Rutland when recorded in a Stoneygate garden in 2021.
CAPochin
Stoneygate garden
29 March 2021
CAPochin
Stoneygate garden
29 March 2021
CAPochin
Stoneygate garden
29 March 2021
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Species profile
- Common names
- Australian flatworm
- Species group:
- Worms
- Kingdom:
- Animalia
- Order:
- Seriata
- Family:
- Geoplanidae
- Records on NatureSpot:
- 2
- First record:
- 29/03/2021 (Pochin, Christine)
- Last record:
- 04/04/2023 (Pochin, Christine)
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