Geophilomorpha

Food

It has long been believed that earthworms are an important item in the diet of geophilomorphs. Newport (1844) and Wood (1865) stated that earthworms form the diet of the Geophilomorpha and Brehm (1877) figured a Geophilus coiled round a large earthworm. Brade-Birks (1929) recovered setae, probably of a very young lumbricid worm, from the gut of a specimen of Haplophilus subterraneus. Auerbach (1951) was unable to substantiate that Geophilus rubens Say or Strigamia fulva Sager fed on worms: both species refused a selection of small arthropods although the Strigamia accepted a small beetle larva. Weil (1958) found a Necrophloeophagus longicornis under a stone attacking a lumbricid twice its length. He found that large earthworms struggle free from geophilomorphs with ease and do not appear to be harmed by their bite and concluded that centipedes are seldom successful in overcoming earthworms larger than themselves.

Johnson (1952) showed that in the laboratory, Geophilus rubens accepted Drosophila larvae and adults, mycetophilid larvae, snails' eggs and small enchytraeid worms but not mites, elaterid or buprestid beetle larvae or earthworms. Weil (1958) reported that N. longicornis takes very small earthworms, weakly sclerotised insect larvae, young lithobiomorphs and occasionally enchytraeids, and entomobryomorph Collembola but not Tomocerus. It occasionally attacks newly moulted insect larvae: a teneral Lacon murinus was stabbed with one poison claw and opened between the scutellum and the elytra.