Five velvet worm species discovered in and around the Garden Route National Park (GRNP) recently show a healthy eco-system as the 5 million-year-old species thrive only in “pristine conditions”.
SANParks said the discovery of peripatopsis clavigera was made by independent researchers from Stellenbosch University – Aaron Barnes, Till Reiss and Savel Daniels.
GRNP general manager Vuyiswa Thabethe said they were excited about the news.
“Not only are we in the midst of age-old wonder creatures dating back as far as 5 million years ago, velvet worms thrive in pristine conditions only. Their existence in the forest point to how well the forests are managed under the GRNP. The forests are healthy and thriving,” Thabethe said.
The researchers focused on area Diepwalle, Goudveld, Groeneweide, Garden of Eden (Harkerville), and the Wilderness (Brown Hooded Kingfisher trail, Beervlei, Half Collared Kingfisher Trail, Woodville Big tree).
Areas outside the Park included the Robinson’s pass, Witfontein, Jonkersberg, Homtini, Tulbagh.
Barnes said velvet worm movement is highly restricted.
“They can only occur and move between pristine forest habitats, living within dead and rotting logs in Afrotemperate forests.”
The purpose of the study was to revise information previously collected through sampling efforts on the Cape species of velvet worms, as a study in 2009 collected eight samples only.
The recently completed study by Barnes, Reiss and Daniels collected some 110 odd samples, most recently the discovery of five new species in the Afrotemperate forests.
The researchers expected to find three isolated species at most, but instead found the velvet worms distributed among many forest patches, sometimes with different species in the same log.
The fragmented Afrotemperate Southern Cape forests were shaped by ancient climatic conditions, characterised by alternate wet and dry conditions.
This had an impact on the distribution of the species as forests expanded and contracted in response.
“That is how they speciated,” said Barnes.
“Populations were likely widely distributed across expansive forests during wet conditions and confined to smaller forest fragments under dry conditions. Being unable to move between these smaller patches of forest, they speciated. The unusual distribution of species that we see today is most likely due to repeated cycles of this process over millions of years.”
The Knysna velvet worm known as the peripatopsis clavigera is part of the peripatopsis genus.
Females have a placenta and give birth to live young who are fully developed. They are nocturnal, ambush predators that mostly prey on other invertebrates.
To catch prey, they squirt a sticky slime from a pair of glands on their heads.
Some species have a social structure led by matriarchs, much like elephants, who hunt together and leave a scent for others to follow their whereabouts.
The species are ranked as vulnerable in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.