Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1992, Qupperneq 45

The exotic land planarian Artioposthia
triangulata in the Faroe Islands:
Colonisation and habitats
Janice G. Mather and Ole M. Christensen
Introduction
The land planarian Artioposthia triangula-
ta (Dendy, 1894) from New Zealand is in
the process of colonising certain European
countries bordering the North Atlantic, in
particular Northem Ireland, Scotland and,
most recently, the Faroe Islands. This land
planarian is recognisable by its flattened
body which is purplish-brown in colour
with dark-grey specks and translucent mar-
gin. When active and elongated it can be
over 20 cm long, whereas when at rest it
adopts a characteristic coiled position
forming a flat spiral, usually surrounded by
mucus. The land planarian produces
conspicuous, shiny-black egg capsules
(resembling crowberries) from which sev-
eral cream coloured juveniles emerge. The
occurrence of this exotic flatworm in the
northem hemisphere is being associated
with an absence of lumbricid earthworms.
The first record of A. triangulata outside
New Zealand was in 1963 when it was dis-
covered in gardens in the suburbs of
Belfast, Northem Ireland (Anon, 1964).
Nowadays, the land planarian has been
recorded in every county in Northem
Ireland (Willis and Edwards, 1977;
Anderson, 1986; Blackshaw and Stewart,
1992). In Scotland, the planarian was first
found in 1965 in the Royal Botanic
Gardens, Edinburgh (Willis and Edwards,
1977), and is now becoming widespread,
with reports from as far north as Stromness
in the Orkney Islands down to the border
with England (BRISC, 1992).
The earliest sighting of A. triangulata in
the Faroe Islands appears to date back to
1982 when specimens of a strange flat-
worm were noticed in Tórshavn. The first
verified observations were in 1990, speci-
mens being found in the village of Kvívík,
30 km to the north-west of Tórshavn. Over
the past two years, the flatworm (flat-
maðkur in Faroese) has been recorded from
several other localities in the Faroes
(Bloch, 1992).
Introduction of the land planarian to
Fróðskaparrit 40. bók (1992):49-60