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3. Aquatic millipede

I know we've been through this before, but tonight I saw these guys IN the stream in numbers that were hard to believe. The algae in the middle of the stream was covered with thousands and thousands of them, all alive and well as far as I could tell. The pic covers the breadth of colors pretty well.

-Shawn

P.S. I am now taking a vial with me to the stream and will attempt to photograph bugs before I ask the experts to identify them. I know this probably insults their capabilities and makes the ID's too easy, but I figure it's the least I can do.

Hi Shawn-

They are actually millipedes, as they have two pair of legs on each segment, as opposed to the one pair which centipedes have. Millipedes are sightless, and their migrations seem not to be deterred by crossing a stream. I've plowed this field before, and as far as I was able to determine, there aren't any aquatic species of millipedes, but they certainly seem to have a single-mindedness of purpose. :-).

Shawn,

Did you see any fish taking them? I hope not...My boxes are filled to the brim as it is! :)

Spence

Fish weren't taking anything. Well, except for a little inchworm pattern that's kept me from a skunking many times - I picked up a few on that. Tough fishing on a really tough little creek. I had to earn my fish.

-Shawn

I saw those too -earlier this spring in the Hudson Valley. They were under wet soggy leaf litter we turned when looking for salamanders along a very small headwater stream. Same centipede-like millipedes. Speaking of centipedes, a buddy and I found a HUGE pale centipede in SE CO a month or so ago. It was ~8" long and leg sprawl probably an inch. Talk about the heeby-jeebys. My friend collected it to send to a centipede specialist. It turned out to be a common plains species, but at the far northern edge of its range.

Ah, come on Spence! Tie some vinyl rib on a long shank hook, rib with saddle in the gaps and trim to shape. Load up them boxes, man! :)

I know there are aquatic millipedes in Australia, but I've never heard of any in North America. I'll look into this further and see if I can find any info!

Jeff

Shawn,


Interesting... Same general silhouette as the millipedes - similar size?

Dear Dr. Shelley,

Are there any aquatic millipedes in N. America? My belief is that there are not, but I just discovered your specialty on BugGuide, and thought this would be a great opportunity to find out for sure.



Sincerely,

Roger Rohrbeck
Mercer Island, WA
www.FlyfishingEntomology.com

Hmmmmmm, curiouser and curiouser...

Jonathon

P.S. Shouldn't be hard to imitate - I'd use ostrich herl for the legs myself...

Gee Roger! Nothing like going to the source for an answer...:) The Curator of Terrestrial Invertebrates...Wow! As my mother used to say, "You learn something new every day." My wife thinks I can put them asleep now when I explain to guests the "Life Cycle of the Mayfly"...Wait until I corner one of our dinner guests with what I know about millipeds! :)

As Jess might say, "Nice play, bro!"

Spence

Hi, Spence. It's great to hear from you again. Actually, I've found that most professional entomologists are extremely gracious about answering questions from a non-credentialed enthusiast like me, particularly when they are not asked to identify a specimen from a photo. :-)

Fascinating. Thanks for following up, Roger.

Kurt, I don't think the inchworm was imitating the millipedes. I was fishing near the confluence of two creeks. I spent most of my time fishing in one of them, then noticed the millipedes in the other one as I was getting into position to fish the pool at the confluence just before leaving. I didn't notice any millipedes in the stream I fished most of the time. Sorry if my previous posts lacked clarity - it may have sounded like I tried fishing the millipede "hatch". I didn't have time to explore either upstream or downstream very far from the place loaded with millipedes - I may have just stumbled upon a concentrated migration path. If fish take these, though, it wouldn't surprise me if they could be a really important terrestrial, though - like many others, I have seen them by the thousands on streamside rocks many times. I'll probably tie up a few imitations to test that hypothesis the next time I run into a concentration in the stream. In a pinch, a large caddis larva or small hellgrammite tie might make a pretty good imitation.

-Shawn

For clarity, the millipedes I found in NY were NOT "aquatic" just in damp areas close the stream.

Oh well... Woulda been cool though!:)

Interesting indeed. The information I had on aquatic millipedes in Australia came from another millipede specialist, Dr. Dennis Black of La Trobe University, whose PhD was on millipede taxonomy. It seems even the experts can't agree!

Jeff

This past weekend, while fishing the West Branch for the first time, we ran into a bait fisherman who was in the process of landing a brown. He manhandled the fish pretty good, and while extracting his worm from the fish's gut, he squeezed the fish pretty hard and some of the stomach contents came up with the worm. Among the blob of goo? Several of these millipedes.

-Shawn

Neat.

I was back in the Hudson Highlands in July and my son found a mass of those same flattish (dorso-ventrally) millipedes we'd found along the little headwater creek last spring. "Hundreds" my son said. These however were along a boardwalk a good 100 yards from water (a little stream). It appears they mass up in large numbers at times.

Some transparent brown vinyl for the body, ostrich herl for the legs...maybe a size 10 nymph hook, bent slightly...who knows, could be deadly...

Jonathon