General Information

COMMON NAMES: Pot-plant Flatworm GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION: NATIVE Vietnam - Kampuchea - ?Malaysia; EXOTIC EXOTIC circumtropical & subtropics, incl. Samoa - Tahiti, Hawaii COOK ISLANDS STATUS: Introduced, Recent, naturalised; S.Group only (Rarotonga only, so far); Land; Horticultural Zone and low inland KEY FEATURES: Slender, flatworm, to 22cm. HEAD flat, fan-like, without eyes. BODY "neck" 2mm wide with black sides; dorsoventally flattened, to 5mm wide, brown above with three slender black stripes - 1 mid-dorsal and 2 dorsolateral; underside pale grey-brown. Mouth (also functions as anus) midventral with protusible pharynx. Spread with rooted plants, first described from Kew gardens glasshouse in 1878.

Cook Islands Distribution

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Southern Group: Present    Makatea:
RR	MG	AT	MK	MT	AK	PL	TK	MN
P

Northern Group:
TN	MH	RK	PK	NS	SW

Bipalium kewense Moseley, 1878
TAXONOMY: ANIMALIA; PLATYHELMINTHES; TURBELLARIA; Seriata; Tricladida; Terricola; BIPALIIDAE

GENERAL NOTE: Land planarians mainly eat earthworms, slugs, and insect larvae. They have a particular voracious appetite for earthworms and can destroy whole populations. The prey are located by chemoreceptors on the head. The prey are held to the substrate and entangled in slimy secretions. The pharynx is protruded from the mouth and into the prey. Food is reduced to small particles and then taken into the gut system. They store food in digestive wall-cells and can survive many weeks shrinking slowly in size without feeding.

Vouchers:
Rarotonga: fieldspecimen+photo, Matavera horticultural zone house when washing a BBQ plate, possibly came out of the hose, 5/2005, Kelvin Passfield, ID via image on Pestnest Matt Purea and Peter Maddison 5/2005 as Bipalium kewense; fieldspecimen+photo, Arorangi in valley ~50m elevation on damp stone in almost dry stream, G.McCormack with ID as Bipalium kewense.

References:
None recorded.

Data Update History (information):
zTX, zB05a, zM05a, zD05a

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