User:Bcsherrill/Narceus americanus

Description
Narceus Americanus is a large millipede of eastern North America. Often refrenced by other names such as American, giant millipede, worm millipede, and iron worm. It has a grayish-red cylindrical body that reaches a length of 153 mm and a weight of 2.5 grams. Although the prefix "milli" in millipede may lead some to believe that there are up to a thousand legs, the highest recorded amount is 375 pairs on a single millipede.

Geographic Range
This species usually inhabits forested upland areas, although can uncommonly be found in wetlands. The Narceus americanus inhabits the eastern part of North America ranging from southern Quebec down to the Florida Keys and westward to south-central Texas. Narceus americanus has a western limit near the Ottine swamps, not far south of Georgetown, Texas. They have also been found in the Quebec and Ontario provinces in Canada.

Habitat
Narceus americanus can be found in forests underneath rocks, dead trees, piles of dead leaves, and the corpses of dead animals. Millipedes require a habitat with high humidity due to their cuticles being permeable to water. If there is no humidity or the habitat becomes very dry the millipedes body will become dehydrated.

When the forest floor becomes dry the millipedes body becomes very stressed from the decrease in humidity. As a result the millipede will burrow into a log and seal themselves in. This is to reserve their body's moisture during stressful periods of dehydration. The millipede usually stays hidden in it's burrow for two weeks.

Early Life and Reproduction
Reproduction usually occurs in the late spring and early summer. Males spin and emit a silken thread that produces pheromones, attracting females. The males crawl along the back of the females, stimulating them. The female then open up their reproductive segment allowing the male to pass a packet of sperm which will later be used to fertilize the female's eggs.

Females place each individual egg into a wad of chewed leaf litter, the wad is then passed backwards via legs and is shaped and molded within the millipedes rectum before being placed with the others egg packets. When the egg hatches, the offspring has 3 pairs of legs and 7 body segments. The millipede molts many times throughout its life which results in more legs, body segments, and other features.

Behavior
Millipedes are nocturnal, travel alone, and hibernate in the winter months. Millipedes are motile and move using their pairs of legs. The pairs of legs move simultaneously and the subsequent pairs move in a wavelike motion down the entire body.

Communication and Sensory Organs
Millipedes are able to sense their environments using antennae. Their antennae can taste food, smell odors, find water sources, and sense pheromones released by other millipedes. The antennae can also sense the humidity levels of the environment using sensory organs located at the base of the antennae. The millipede also has a set of eyes located on their head that sense light and movement.

Food
Millipedes are detritivores and usually feed on decaying leaves, wood, and roots. Most also eat their own feces to get nutrients that maybe were not digested the first time. The millipede moisturizes food with secretions and then scrapes the food into its mouth using its jaws. Millipedes remain hidden beneath logs during the day and emerges on warm nights to search the ground and tree trunks for dead plants and animals to eat.

Defense Mechanism
N. americanus do not bite or sting when handled, but do dispense a irritating, yellow fluid that stains the skin. Millipedes are slow moving scavengers and their major defense against predators is their distastefulness. When confronted by a predator the millipede curls up and releases chemicals to scare away the predator. When curling into a tight coil for defense, the millipede is tucking in its pairs of legs and relying on its hard outer shell for protection. Predators of the millipede include ants, beetles, birds, centipedes, cockroaches, dogs, foxes, frogs, lizards, moles, opossums, raccoons, salamanders, scorpions, shrews, skunks, toads, turtles, and many more.

Human Relationship
One of the ways humans benefit from millipedes is that some of the millipedes defensive secretions show potential in helping create new pharmaceuticals.