Team hopes to find another rare worm

ALBION, Wash. – The search for the big white worm began Wednesday morning with a journey in a big white van.

The van carried assorted soil scientists, entomologists and the Northwest’s leading worm expert to one of the few remaining patches of virgin Palouse prairie. The safari crew hiked up the hillside armed with narrow-bladed shovels, plastic baggies and digital cameras.

They probed and dug through the same rich, prairie earth where last May a University of Idaho graduate student uncovered a giant Palouse earthworm – one of only four confirmed sightings in the past 30 years of the Driloleirus americanus worm.

“This could be the last holdout,” said worm expert William Fender, who traveled from Portland with his shovel to help search for the Northwest’s answer to the ivory-billed woodpecker. Fender is responsible for two of the four Palouse earthworm finds, both made in the late 1970s near Moscow and Pullman. Fender’s mother conducted some of the original research on the worm in the 1940s. Now 90, she continues to study worms, though she doesn’t spend much time in the field.

The Palouse earthworms are albino-pale and can grow to 3 feet in length and as wide as a finger. The worms are also noted for their ability to spit a lily-scented saliva when frightened. They were once believed to be abundant – road construction crews noted the creature’s wide burrows, which were as deep as 15 feet.

The worms might spend the heat of the summer deep underground, but they come to the surface to feed, Fender said. The surface is also where steel plow blades dwell. Less than 1 percent of the native Palouse prairie remains undisturbed, said Paul McDaniel, associate professor of plant, soil and entomological sciences at the University of Idaho.

“There’s no habitat left,” McDaniel said, as he hiked toward the 40-acre plot of virgin prairie hillside where the last worm was found. “A long earthworm and a plow cannot coexist.”

The rediscovery of the Palouse worm generated considerable excitement on campus, McDaniel said. Students might sit and stare blankly through lectures during introductory soil science classes, but “I talk about the giant Palouse earthworm and their ears perk up,” McDaniel said.

Several people in the Moscow area are now pushing for protection for the worm and are beginning the process of seeking a federal Endangered Species Act listing, which would be a first for the worm family. Although more than 20 butterflies are protected by the law – including the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly, which is named after the family of William Fender – few other spineless creatures are on the list.

Within minutes of reaching the plot where the last Palouse earthworm was found, Fender began digging. He didn’t talk much as he worked. Mostly he just upturned clods of earth, then broke them apart looking for the white worm. There were white tendrils of roots and dozens of common, red garden worms, but none of the initial digs revealed any traces of the Palouse giants in the soil of Washington State University’s Hudson Biological Reserve.

With so little known about the native worms, it’s tough to find ways to protect the species and its habitat, said Jodi Johnson-Maynard, an assistant University of Idaho professor who specializes in soil ecology. Some of the worms have been found in the forest. Others below prairie grass. Johnson-Maynard said there’s a sense of desperation behind the worm research. The Palouse prairie is nearly gone and the worms could be close behind.

“It’s a lost opportunity if these lands are destroyed. We won’t know what we’ve lost,” Johnson-Maynard said.

The dirt teemed with garden-variety worms, which came from Europe in soil ballast used to weight ships. The worms then spread west in flower pots carried by settlers, Johnson-Maynard said.

These garden worms, as well as the exotic nightcrawlers, are short enough to survive plow blades. The immigrant worms actually seem to thrive in tilled soil, Johnson-Maynard said. Their success has helped crowd out native species.

As she dug, Johnson-Maynard pointed to tiny globules of dirt near the surface – nothing more than the wee bowel movements of the exotic worms, she explained. Americanus droppings would be much larger and distinct spheres.

After dozens of probes, no trace of the white worm had turned up. The searchers weren’t surprised. The graduate student who found the last worm, Yaniria Sanchez-de Leon, had been studying exotic worms on the hillside for two years, digging countless test plots, before that morning last May when she spotted a flash of white flesh in the soil.

About an hour into the search, Fender saw something strange: an unusually large worm burrow.

“There’s nothing out there, no lumbricid” – a member of the fat nightcrawler family – “that would make a channel like that,” Fender said, closely eyeing the hole, which had smooth walls and was wide enough to fit a grown man’s pinkie.

“I wonder if we should try the mustard?” Johnson-Maynard asked, referring to a spicy liquid concoction of hot mustard powder and mild acid. She poured the irritating liquid into the hole, hoping it might force any worms to race to the surface. Mild electricity has the same effect, Johnson-Maynard said.

The worm searchers stared into the hole, watching the mud for a writhing white ribbon. Nothing happened.

“I think we should try the earthworm song,” suggested Hans Kok, a soil conservationist from Washington State University’s Extension Service.

“Do you know the song?” asked local entomologist Rod Sprague.

Kok began humming a tune with a familiar wedding song sound.

“That’s the chicken dance!” Johnson-Maynard said. “I don’t want to dig up any chickens!”

Fender smiled, then got back to work with his shovel. He found more telltale holes, but none of the actual worms.

“One has lived there recently,” he declared. “They’re still here. I’d say one lives down there someplace.”

The sun was bright, and not much rain had fallen in the last three weeks. Worms like it dark, cool and damp. This was not worm weather, Fender said. He planned to return soon when the weather was better. But he wasn’t ready to leave just yet.

“A couple more shovels full,” he said, stepping his blade into the ground. “I’m sure they’re here.”