Invasive 'Jumping Worms' In MN: What To Know

MINNESOTA — The invasive jumping worm has made its way to Minnesota, as well as at least 34 other states in the U.S. These worms eat the nutrients found in soil and even worse-can jump one foot into the air.

These invasive Asian jumping worms — their scientific name is Amynthas agrestis — earn their nickname and their reputation. They're also called Alabama jumpers, Jersey wrigglers, wood eel, crazy worms, snake worms and crazy snake worms.

Their common names are descriptive of "the way they thrash around," USDA Forest Service soil scientist Mac Callaham said in a post last month on the agency's website. "They can flip themselves a foot off the ground."

Beneficial earthworms aerate the soil and help prep it for growth. But once jumping worms have had their way in your dirt, it will have the consistency of coffee grounds — and be about as useful for growing things as the dredges from the morning pot of joe.

Other earthworms also "get elbowed out of the way" by this invasive Asian species, Donald Lewis, an Iowa State University entomology professor, told news station KCCI in Des Moines.

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Jumping-worm populations grow quickly through a couple of generations a season. Like other worms, they're hermaphrodites, meaning they have both male and female reproductive organs, but with a distinction: Jumping worms reproduce on their own, according the extension service at Iowa State.

They Engineer Their Own Ecosystems

Jumping worms are wreaking havoc with soil and, ultimately, the circle of life, Callaham told Sarah Farmer, a science writer for the Forest Service's Southern Research Station in Asheville, North Carolina.

Jumping worms expend a lot of energy, which they fuel by eating everything in their path. That includes leaf litter, the first layer of soil on the forest floor — home not only many unseen tiny creatures but also an important source of nutrients plants need to sprout and grow.
All earthworms feed on leaf litter, but jumping worms are "voracious," Callaham said.

"Soil is the foundation of life — and Asian jumping worms change that," the soil scientist continued. "In fact, earthworms can have such huge impacts that they're able to actually engineer the ecosystems around them."

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It's a conundrum for scientists, who say they need to learn more about the ecology of jumping worms before prescribing a management plan. The intelligence on them so far by about two dozen scientists was collected last year in a research paper detailing the second wave of jumping worm infestation in North America.

"We cannot really manage them once they are here," Andrea Davalos, an assistant professor of biology at State University of New York-Cortland and one of the authors of the research paper, told Upstate New York.

"There's no appropriate method to get rid of them," said Davalos, who also is a member of New York's Jumping Worm Outreach, Research & Management collaborative.

What Davalos and others have found in New York is that while jumping worms are widespread from Long Island to Ontario, Canada, their colonies are "very patchy." A colony of up to 30 jumping worms can live in a 2.6-square-foot garden plot, but a similarly sized space nearby may have none.

'Forestry-Wise, It's Disastrous'

Maine state horticulturalist Gary Fish told NECN, an NBC affiliate serving the Northeast, said his office has seen the number of reports of jumping worms increasing over the past five years and that their spread has been "a problem across the whole Northeast."

"Forestry-wise," he told NECN, "I would say it's disastrous."

Of particular risk, he said, are the maple trees in Vermont used to make syrup, and others used for wood products such as ash.

Similar stories have emerged close to home.

"Because of their ability to clone themselves, just one jumping worm can start a population, which makes them a different species to manage," Ryan Hueffmeier, an ecologist, environmentalist and professor in University Of Minnesota Duluth's College of Education and Human Service Professions, told KSMP, a Fox News affiliate in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.