North American Earthworms

Just this past weekend, I was re-reading Parliament of Whores by P.J. O’Rourke. In passing, P.J. mentioned that there were no earthworms in North America until the 17th century; at first glance, this seems a bit dubious. He claims earthworms were introduced from Africa by way of potted plants in the late 1600’s. I understand the classification of worms can be a tricky business, so I’m assuming P.J. is talking about the phylum Annelida. Now, I usually find P.J to be a reliable source (probably 'cuz I happen to agree with his political philosophy), but when it comes to science, I’d rather not take the word of a political pundit at face value. And before anyone asks, I, of course, have forgotten the context in which this was stated.

Can this be true? Does anyone have any better information or sources on the genesis of earthworms in North America? Are/were there other creatures that condition the soil as efficiently as the earthworm or have earthworms displaced all of them?

All I can find is this…

Q. Why are there no native Canadian earthworms?

A. Because glacial sheets that covered nearly all of Canada until about 15,000 years ago wiped out any native North American
species that may have lived here.
From this source.
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/academic/agriculture/sustainable_agriculture/faqs/earthworm-faq.html

Looks like P.J. may be on to something. He seems to be correct. I looked stuff up, and came up with this Here,here,and here.
Still no info on what was here to tend our soil before that though.

Boy have I ever been led astray. Three blocks from where I grew up lived a bait dealer.He was always going to Canada to buy worms.IIRC because they were larger than our native worms.
Maybe he had a girlfriend.:wink:
Thirty years have passed and the buisness is still there.I don’t have contact with them anymore so I don’t know if they still drive 500 miles one way to get worms.
Seems a long drive to get a product then sold for a nickel each.And if they wern’t native they could have been raised locally.

There is large difference between no earthworms and certain new varieties being introduced. I always thought earthworms (of some sort) were umbiquitous in arable soils throughout the world. Also, how would you determine that a certain variety of earthworm in America didn’t exist prior to 1600. Were there naturalists cataloging American earthworms (or lack thereof) earlier than 1600?

I work more with aquatic annelids, and these have definitely not been introduced and have been in the Americas for millions of years. O’Rourke cannot possibly have been talking of all annelids and still be correct.

It is possible that the most common earthworm, Lumbricus spp., usually Lumbricus terrestris IIRC, is an introduced species from elsewhere, I really don’t know, but that’s a far cry from there being no earthworms in the Americas at all. A complete absence of earthworms would have had seriously disasterous consequences for the soil ecology of the Americas, and I think we’d know about that.

It looks like a certain amount of semantic confusion (how much is O’Rourke’s responsibility, I don’t know).

The earthworm is L. terrestris, which is an introduced species. There are other worms that live in the earth, but they’re not “earthworms” per se. Some are native to North America, and play a role in conditioning soil.