First we heard about murder hornets, then giant palm-sized Joro spiders. Now experts say people should be on the lookout for jumping worms.
Amynthas worms, which are native to East Asia and often called “snake worms,” “jumping worms,” or “crazy worms” because of the way they move, can have a devastating impact on forest ecosystems.
“They’re called crazy worms because they writhe around a lot more than other worms, and they move like snakes,” said Gary Fish, state horticulturist at the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.
The state of Maine’s website says that when the worms are handled, “they act crazy, jump and thrash about, behaving more like a threatened snake than a nightcrawler.”
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These fast-moving worms, which have a distinctive white band on their bodies, can be found all over New England, he said. Amynthas worms were first collected in Maine over a century ago, but concerns about their spread have increased in recent years.
“It’s only been in the last 10 or 15 years that people have been finding them and reporting them regularly,” Fish said in a phone interview. “They’ve been found in 10 of the 16 counties in Maine.”
Officials in Maine and Massachusetts are asking people to keep an eye out for jumping worms on their property, and to be very careful when buying compost and plants. The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation recommends removing the soil from plants before planting them and buying compost that has undergone a specified heating procedure to kill worm cocoons.
Most of the jumping worm sightings have been in urban and suburban gardens, as well as some lawns and at least one golf course, he said.
“The biggest problem we’re concerned about is for them to get into the forest,” Fish said. “We don’t have a good handle about the situation in the forests.”
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Jumping worms have a huge appetite for organic matter on the forest floor, which can be detrimental to the surrounding ecosystem.
“They eat it up very quickly,” Fish said. “Because they eat away all of that leaf litter, they take away the slow release of nutrients that the trees have come to rely on. They completely disrupt the top layer of the soil. It causes the soil to be hardened, so there’s less penetration of water, and then you get erosion. Tree roots can become exposed above the ground. That definitely creates a major problem for those trees.”
It goes without saying that jumping worms should not be purchased for composting purposes or for bait.
“Sometimes these worms end up being used as fishing bait,” Fish said. “We want to let anglers know, you should never dump your worms out in the wild.”
While there is cause for concern about jumping worms, Fish cautioned that there’s no need to panic.
“The main thing is to stop spreading them around,” said Fish. “They’re being moved by people.”
Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.