Breaking News! Discovering "New" Species At Work- Land Flatworm in Illinois!

As I've mentioned before, work is an excellent place to find strange bugs/ invertebrates.  Today, for instance, I lifted up a container and found this:

I initially thought this was some sort of leech, so I told my coworkers it was a land leech, probably escaped from the greenhouse.  However, this is actually a planarian, or flatworm.  Not only that, it's quite possibly one of the worst possible things I could have ever discovered.

(Speaking of worst possible things, I just realized that I accidentally deleted my Indiana Dunes post after a week of working on it.  So, yeah.  It's been an interesting day.  That post will be redone and out in a few days after this.)

This resembles the incredibly invasive New Guinea Flatworm (Platydemus manokwari), listed as one of the top 100 most invasive species in the world.  It has never been found in Illinois before, and if this is in fact the New Guinea Flatworm, oh boy.  The New Guinea flatworm is a major predator of snails, slugs, and earthworms, to the point that it has driven several species extinct on Pacific islands. It's never spread across a mainland continent before, having only recently been found in Florida.  Although it's missing the light brown stripe vertically across the back, this specimen in all other respects agrees with the descriptions I've been able to find on the internet.  As of yet, it has not been confirmed with an expert whether this is in fact that species.

I'll quote from Wikipedia:

 "while most of the infected territories reported until now were islands, the newly reported presence of the species in mainland US in Florida should be considered a potential major threat to the whole US and even the Americas".^[1]

Doesn't that sound cheerful? Now, this possible species is found in at least Miami, Florida, as this article discusses:
http://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-guinea-flatworm-one-worst-known-invasive-species-found-us/

Illinois is a long way from Florida. However, I found my specimen near some greenhouse-grown tropical plants, and this species has been found in greenhouses in Europe.  Therefore, it likely came from a greenhouse.  Figuring out which one is the real question.  Either way, I was the first person to find and identify this species in Illinois, which makes it a new species for Illinois, albeit maybe an invasive exotic.  Yippee-skippee.  I mean, I've always wanted to find a new species, but one that was new to science.  I intended to obtain the original as a live specimen, but two things happened.  One, it died in the heat, and two, I accidentally squished the dead body with my water jug, obliterating the planarian cadaver.  Still, I have two eyewitnesses and three pictures, shown above, as well as my own testimony.   I have spoken to a member of the Department of Agriculture, and they are beginning an investigation of this animal.  Stay tuned.

Note:  Please do not use or quote this article, except where allowed by fair use, without my explicit permission.