[2nd try. Sorry about the garbled previous version. The list software had
indigestion on the rich text content - GBR, Moderator]
Dear Geoff and everybody,
As I'm (hopefully) about to start my doctoral studies on serpulids being
introduced to new areas via fouling and ballast water (Ficopomatus
enigmaticus and the Hydroides-species), your find was very interesting. To
my knowledge, the only fouling species of Hydroides are H. ezoensis, H.
elegans, and H. dianthus. Both H. ezoensis and H. elegans have a central
tooth in the operculum, and H. elegans has multiple lateral spinules on 7-21
spines, while H. ezoensis has 5-8 spinules pointing inwards on 20-35
spines. H. dianthus has no central tooth and 8-13 spines of dissimilar
length pointing to one side, the spines have reportedly no lateral teeth. The
length of these species are: H. ezoensis ~45 mm, H. elegans ~20 mm, H.
dianthus ~40 mm. All have bayonet setae. As far as I can tell from the
pictures and the description, none of these species is consistent with your
specimen but perhaps H. dianthus is the "closest one"? (The distribution of
the species: H. dianthus: East coast of North-America, the Mediterranean,
Spain, France, UK (Southampton). H. ezoensis: UK (Southampton,
Portsmouth, Isle of Wight), east coast of China, Japan. H. elegans:
Tropical and subtropical waters.)
Like Geoff, I'm very interested to hear what others have to say about this
worm. I'm also wondering what kind of boat the worm was found attached to
and wether the boat is permanently situated around New Zealand or
trafficking a larger part of the world? (I'm curious wether this could be (at
least to me) a new ship-fouling serpulid, or perhaps an introduction to a
new area.) If anybody has knowledge of other ship-fouling Hydroides-
species than the ones mentioned I'll be happy to know about them!
Best regards,
Toril
----------
Toril Loennechen Moen
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Museum of Natural History and Archaeology
Department of Natural History
Erling Skakkes gate 47a
N-7491 TRONDHEIM
NORWAY
phone: +47 7359 2287
fax: +47 7359 2295
e-mail: tolomo at nvg.ntnu.no
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