# Worms that travel in packs?



## ilovebugs (Mar 1, 2010)

I started a moss garden in a ten gallon aquarium a couple months ago. (I've always found it interesting)
I also included a bark scorpion, some earth worms and a small spider found in at subway. 

Anyway, since starting the garden I have observed many small critters including a psuedoscorpion and some small spiders. 

Most curious though, are a pack of worms that travel together. 
They are about 3mm wide and 1cm long. Clear bodies and a tiny black head. 
I'm very interested to see if they are some type of larve. 

Until today, they always seemed to be in a crowd, but today I saw one alone, so I looked around and found the group and placed him with his friends. I then noticed that they weren't in a mass as usual, they were all stacked up moving along eachother almost as one big worm. 
They seem to travel like this until they find something tasty and crowd around. 
Estimating by the amount per inch of the trail, I'd say there are at least 80 of them. 

I'm going to try to get a picture with my friends camera, my iPhone doesn't take macro shots too well. 

Is this typical worm behavior??


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## ZephAmp (Mar 2, 2010)

Those are the larvae of some sort of fungus gnat.
Just this September I had the pleasure of seeing herds of them move across my front lawn and sidewalk; strangely some of them began forming loops in perfect circles!


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## ilovebugs (Mar 5, 2010)

Oh wow. Two days ago I decided they were eating too much of the moss and not just the decaying matter. So when they were all in a line on the glass I scraped them off with a peice of paper and moved them to a seprate container. Still curious to see them as adults.


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## ZergFront (Mar 5, 2010)

Well, if they feed on decay maybe put them in a container with substrate and have some raw materials layed on top. Like leaf litter, maybe some left over veggies you wouldn't need (veggie or fruit cuts, apple cores and peelings). Be interesting to see what comes out.

 When I read "Worms that travel in packs?" my first thought actually went to some of the tent caterpillars that travel in close groups to deter predators.


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