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glow worm (Otherwise known as a "railroad worm"

female larviform of the Phrixothrix hirtus beetle.

Photo by James Kamlet
Published on Project Noah
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41.4035, -74.0126

Field Notes

Description:

It was at least 4" long. I saw it dragging a dead millipede of the same size along a dirt road in Black Rock forest. As you can see in the photo it was segmented with two orange spots to each segment.

Habitat:

northeast hardwood forest

Notes:

I thought it should be called a "Peter Pan bug" because (I read) the female of this species never grows up, remaining as a larva its whole adult life. (I also read that this is called a larviform). I guess the males like robbing the cradle.

Reference Links:

Railroad worm

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (3)
LisaPowers
Please be sure to move the comments from the common and scientific name fields. These fields are reserved specifically for the names so as to be easy to find in the search engines, by "muddying" up these fields, you make it harder for people to find/see this spotting. Please read our faq's here: http://www.projectnoah.org/faq
LisaPowers
Cool that you caught it feeding on a millipede!
AntónioGinjaGinja
Welcome to Project Noah James Kamlet Nice first spotting,congrats and thanks for sharing We hope you like the site as much we do; there are many features you can explore: We invite you to go to http://www.projectnoah.org/faq where you will find the purpose and “rules” of Project Noah. There is a blog http://blog.projectnoah.org/ where we post articles from spotters with special insight into different organisms. Look at the global and local missions to put your spottings into: http://www.projectnoah.org/missions Enjoy yourself,see you arround :)
Photographed
PublishedNovember 4, 2015

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