In article , Jaques
d'Alltrades writes
The message
from Amynthas contains these words:
In message , Jaques
d'Alltrades writes

I think they sound very like worm 'eggs'.

They don't sound like earthworm cocoons at all. Much more likely
to be arthropod or mollusc eggs or something added by the nursery that
supplied the plant. Looking back at the original description:

Whilst re-potting a miniature rose, I found a hell of a lot of these:
Cocoons are laid one by one as the worm moves through the soil,
not in masses. I've only found occasional ones, never great piles of
them.

If you look at my description of how they are formed, you'll see that
there is but one sphere full of fluid, which will mature into a lot of
tiny worms.

Yes, but the point was that the OP found a lot of them together, which
makes it less likely they were earthworm cocoons.


Of course, there are some worms that don't bother with meeting
up with another worm and just produce cocoons from which identical
copies of themselves emerge. (Come to think of it I don't think anyone
has checked whether the offspring are completely identical at the DNA
level.)

It's not the same as cloning: the ova would still have to be fertilised,
and as the sperms and the ova only have half a set of chromosomes each,
but with several options for the lining-up of many genes I'd guess that
the chances of the parent giving rise to identical copies of itself
would be slim.

I understood amynthas to mean that in some species the ova wouldn't have
to be fertilised - not totally unreasonable? Don't greenfly do something
similar?
--
Kay Easton

Edward's earthworm page:
http://www.scarboro.demon.co.uk/edward/index.htm