The Urban Pantheist

Most of the animals that live in the soil of New England are native to Europe. When Europeans began taking resources from the New World back home, the ships were heavy with beaver pelts and other valuables. To balance the ships in the harbors, soil would be loaded on board in the European port, then dumped on the shores of the American port. Any millipede, isopod, ground beetle, earthworm, or other soil-dwelling creature that could survive the trip had a good chance of surviving in the new continent's rapidly human-altered landscape.

But not this one! I was surprised to learn that this millipede came from the opposite direction. The greenhouse millipede Oxidus gracilis* is native to Asia, and probably traveled across the Pacific in the root balls of imported plants. Greenhouses are wonderful incubators for all kinds of creatures. This millipede is found virtually everywhere in the United States--this individual was living among it's kind and some European isopods, in the soil and worm castings underneath a trash barrel.

*I'm gonna punt this one folks. What do you think they meant by "Oxidus?" Gracilis means slender.

What was it about the millipede picture that disturbed people?

A flat-backed millipede (Pseudopolydesmus sp.) surprised by having its sheltering rock suddenly turned over, in one of our perennial beds.

I thought through this post, then looked at my entry for 365 species #87 and found that I had nothing further to add. The basics are this: millipedes are related to insects, probably predating them, and feed on plants and detritus. They move slowly and use their many legs to push through soil (as opposed to centipedes which use their many legs to move swiftly and scuttle under things). I still don't know why I never encountered flat-backed millipedes as a child--I only ever found garden millipedes, cylindrical in cross-section. Now I find flat-backs under nearly every rock. In New England all our multi-legged beasts are very small, with only our largest house centipedes stretching 2 inches long. Lucky bug-lovers in the subtropics, tropics, and hot deserts get to find centipedes and millipedes as long as their hand or longer.

I found urban wildlife before I even left to go to the field site:

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