Grube, 1850
Including 16 families of mostly terrestrial oligochaetes. Species number about 4000. Four families represented in freshwater of NWE: family Criodrilidae, family Lumbricidae, family Octochaetidae, and family Sparganophilidae, with a total of 12 species.
Description
Earthworms in the broadest sense. Chaetae two per bundle (but in some exotic genera multiple chaetae as transversal ring), sigmoid, simple-pointed. Usually two pairs of testes, in X and XI, and one pair of ovaries, in XIII: male ducts prosoporous. One pair of male pores several segments caudad of testes. Clitellum consisting of several layers of gland cells.
Burrowing in soil and sediment.
Distribution
Cosmopolitan.
Ecology
Mostly in soil, some taxa in freshwater, very seldom in the marine littoral.
Reproduction
Sexual only. Eggs laid in cocoons.
Literature
Grube, 1850: 281; Grube, 1851; Michaelsen, 1920: 140-141; Michaelsen, 1930: 116-118; Sims, 1980: 107; Sims and Gerard, 1985: 42-43 .