Tasmanipatus barretti Ruhberg et al., 1991
(Giant Velvet Worm)

Tasmania's largest velvet worm; mature females can be 75 mm long when fully extended. A specimen of T. barretti from St Marys was photographed more than 60 years ago (Barrett 1938), but the first museum specimens were collected in 1984. Very young T. barretti are pale and can be confused with the all-white Tasmanipatus anophthalmus. Use a strong hand-lens or low-power microscope to check for a dark-coloured eye at the base of the antenna; the eye is missing in T. anophthalmus.

T. barretti is listed as 'Rare' under the Tasmanian Threatened Species Protection Act 1995 and its biology and conservation have been relatively well-studied. It has a range of ca. 600 km² in the northern portion of the East Coast, and occurs in dry eucalypt forest, wet eucalypt forest and rainforest. T. barretti is only rarely found outside rotting logs, especially in the warm, dry, open forests of the Avenue and Scamander River catchments, where it is surprisingly common. When disturbed, T. barretti extends itself and attempts to escape.

Although T. barretti colonies will tolerate selective logging and controlled burning of their forest habitat, they are eliminated by plantation establishment and have not been found to recolonise plantation sites. This threat to their survival has been carefully analysed in a recent study of forestry operations in the T. barretti range (Fox et al. 2004).

A fascinating and still-unexplained aspect of T. barretti biology is its parapatry with T. anophthalmus. The two species ranges meet, with almost no overlap, along a line from just north of Chain of Lagoons, to St Marys Pass, to the Mt Nicholas area.

Localities for Tasmanipatus barretti.  Scale bar = 100 km.
For an interactive map with more up-to-date localities, go to the mapper page.

More information:
 
Taxonomy - Ruhberg et al. (1991), Reid (1996)
Biology - Tait & Briscoe (1990?), Smith & Gilfedder (1993), Horner (1995), Ruhberg et al. (2001)
Distribution, conservation and general - Barrett (1938), Tait & Briscoe (1987), Mesibov (1987), Mesibov (1988), Mesibov (1990), Taylor (1990), Mesibov & Ruhberg (1991), Mesibov (1991a), Jackson & Taylor (1995), Mesibov (1995), Mesibov (1996), Mesibov (1997), Horner (1998), Ruhberg & Mesibov (1996), Bryant & Jackson (1999), Mesibov (2001b), Mesibov et al. (2002), Fox et al. (2004)