''Obama ladislavii'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian

land planarian Geoplanidae is a family of flatworms known commonly as land planarians or land flatworms. These flatworms are mainly predators of other invertebrates, which they hunt, attack and capture using physical force and the adhesive and digestive proper ...

in the subfamily

Geoplaninae Geoplaninae is a subfamily of land planarians endemic to the Neotropical region. However, one species, ''Obama nungara'' has been introduced in Europe. Description The subfamily Geoplaninae was initially defined by Ogren and Kawakatsu (1990)Ogre ...

. It is one of the most common land planarians in human-disturbed environments in southern Brazil and is easily identifiable by the green color of its dorsum.

Description

''Obama ladislavii'' is a medium-sized land planarian with a lanceolate body. The larger specimens have a length of about 100 millimeters or more. The dorsum is green, varying from luminous green to brownish green without stripes. The ventral side is yellowish. The numerous eyes, about 800, are distributed marginally on the first millimeters of the body, being visible as a group of very small black dots, and posteriorly become dorsal, occupying up to 30% of the body width on each side. The dorsal eyes themselves are not easily visible to the naked eye, but are surrounded by a zone without pigmentation, called halo, which may be perceived as small whitish dots. On fully mature specimens, two irregular rows of spots with a darker green tinge may be seen on the first half of the body. Those rows are the many dorsal testicles visible through the body.

Distribution

''Obama ladislavii'' is known to occur in the two southernmost Brazilian states, Santa Catarina and

Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...

. It is found in both native and disturbed environments, including seasonal and moist forests, as well as in human-disturbed areas, such as gardens, parks and

plantations A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

. Among the forest formations in which it was recorded are

Araucaria moist forest The Araucaria moist forests, officially classified as mixed ombrophilous forest (Portuguese: "Floresta Ombrófila Mista") in Brazil, are a montane subtropical moist forest ecoregion. The forest ecosystem is located in southern Brazil and northeast ...

Atlantic rainforest The Atlantic Forest ( pt, Mata Atlântica) is a South American forest that extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the northeast to Rio Grande do Sul state in the south and inland as far as Paraguay and the ...

, and deciduous and semideciduous seasonal forests. Obama ladislavii vs Deroceras laeve

Diet

As most land planarians, ''O. ladislavii'' is a

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

. In

laboratory A laboratory (; ; colloquially lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. Laboratory services are provided in a variety of settings: physicia ...

experiments, it has been shown to feed on land

gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

s, including species of environmental and economic concern, such as ''

Bradybaena similaris ''Bradybaena similaris'', the Asian trampsnail, is a species of small, invasive land snail. It is a pulmonate gastropod terrestrial mollusc in the family Bradybaenidae. It earned the common name based on its origins, and its habit of roosting on ...

'', ''

Cornu aspersum ''Cornu aspersum'' (syn. ''Cryptomphalus aspersus''), known by the common name garden snail, is a species of land snail in the family Helicidae, which includes some of the most familiar land snails. Of all terrestrial molluscs, this species may ...

'' and ''

Deroceras laeve ''Deroceras laeve'', the marsh slug, is a species of small air-breathing land slug, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusk in the family Agriolimacidae. Distribution The distribution of ''Deroceras laeve'' was originally Palearctic, from ...

''. It is able to detect a slime trail left by the gastropod on the substrate and follow it. Once finding the prey, the planarian tries to immobilize it by muscular force and, if it succeeds, it everts its pharynx and begins to consume the gastropod. In order to ingest snails and large slugs, ''O. ladislavii'' pierces the prey's body with its pharynx and sucks its contents, apparently after releasing digestive enzymes. Small slugs may be entirely sucked by the pharynx into the intestine.

References

External links

"Friday Fellow: Ladislau's Flatworm"
at Earthling Nature. {{Taxonbar, from=Q25095452 Geoplanidae Invertebrates of Brazil