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The train carpet lives on a rare cycle, whereby every 8 years, a series of adults overflows onto the ground, forcing many trains to stop.
The rocking of the boat is dragging on the ground. Image: Keiko Niijima.
Every eight years in the fall, an “army” rolls over the train tracks in the mountains of Japan. These tiny creatures are only about 3 cm long, but they have forced many trains to stop. As a result, they received the nickname Parafontaria laminata armigera.
New research published in the Royal Society Open Science on January 13 reveals that this species lives on a rare 8-year cycle. This is very special because before that, vintage cicadas were the only organisms that had such a long cycle.
Ecologist Keiko Niijima, head of the research team, began observing the movement of the train in 1972 on Mount Yatsu and Yanagisawa. The team examined these two sites 1 to 5 times a year until 2016. They dug the soil at different depths to collect the mat.
The ship spawns on the ground. After hatching, they go through another 7 stages to mature and come out of the ground. The development time from egg to maturity is 8 years, each stage lasts approximately one year. During this process, they hibernate in winter and molt in summer.
The train carpet spills onto the ground in September and October, sometimes moving up to 50 meters to play. They then hibernate and mate in late spring. In August, the female has laid between 400 and 1000 eggs. By this time, all adults are dead and a new eight-year cycle begins.
The 8-year cycle of the train’s journey was not synchronized, but varied by location. The research team estimates that there are seven groups of train rollers in the mountainous regions of central Japan. They start their cycle in different years. However, the train track does not travel very far, so each train line in an area will only encounter one set of rails.
The boat mat was the first arthropod that is not an insect ever recorded to live in such a cycle. Arthropods in general and insects in particular make up a large proportion of all animals on Earth, but scientists have only identified about a fifth. Therefore, there may be many more species that live long cycles that need to be explored.
Thu Thao (According to the Science alert)
