Field Museum Collections

[Stephane Hourdez]

Dear all-

This may interest some of you. The Field Museum has nice -and somewhat 
unknown- collections of marine invertebrates. I have spent the past two 
weeks at The Field Museum in Chicago, looking at their deep-sea collections 
of polychaetes. They also have collections from the Bermuda, Galapagos 
islands, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Indian Ocean, Argentina, Greenland, Labrador, 
Mexico, California and various other places (most collected in the early to 
mid 20th century). I ran through the samples to get them determined down to 
the genus level, when possible. These collections could be very interesting to 
some of you. The collections information accessible on their online 
searchable database (see 
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/research_collections/zoology/default.htm and 
follow the links to the collections). These samples represent a small part of 
their collections (they are in the process of cataloguing all their collections). I 
should be able to take care of the Polynoidae but specialists would be 
needed and could find interesting samples for the groups listed below. If you 
are interested, you can e-mail the collection manager, Jochen Gerber 
(jgerber at fieldmuseum.org). They have a very good loan system. If you want 
to know more about the polynoids in these collections, contact me.  

I think this is a very good resource and they are trying to make their
collections available to everyone.

Stephane
 <shourdez at bio.psu.edu>

Here are the groups I have found for the samples not on the online database 
(IDs established from Fauchald 1977):  

Hesionidae (Leocrates sp. from Puerto Rico and another with 8 pairs of 
tentacular cirri and no antennae from Costa Rica) Serpulidae (Spirobranchus 
sp. from the Galapagos, other genera from deep-sea) Eunicidae (Eunice sp., 
couldn’t assign them to a species using Kristian Fauchald’s 1992 review of 
the genus, from Bermuda and deep-sea Gulf of Alaska). Syllidae (there is a 
good series of samples of what seems to be a single species from deep-sea 
Gulf of Alaska and other shallow-water species) Alciopidae (Large Alciopa 
from ca. 100 miles off Vancouver Island) Acrocirridae (Acrocirrus 
heterochaetus, from the Gulf of Alaska, on the Patton Murray Seamount) 
Nephtyidae (Nephtys sp., again some deep-sea ones from the Gulf of 
Alaska) Various Sabellidae Numerous Terebellidae, some of them from deep-
sea Gulf of Alaska (Patton-Murray Seamount) Lumbrineridae (Lumbrineris 
sp.) Phyllodocidae (Lugia sp. from California) Sigalionidae (Pareupholoe sp. 
from off Monterey, Thalenessa sp. Musal Tivu (Indian Ocean)) Nereididae 
(mainly shallow water but also some vent species) Amphinomidae 
(Hermodice sp. from Curacoa, Virgin Islands, British Honduras, and Florida, 
Amphinome sp. from Mexico, Notopygos from Acapulco, Mx). Glycera sp. 
from Terra de Fuego (Argentina) Cirratulidae (Cirratulus sp. from Labrador) 
Pectinariidae (Lagis sp. from Greeland)  

I also have an interesting sample, with 4 specimens which look like a 
Flabelligeridae, with a short anterior setae cage, gills on a paired crest 
(surrounded by the cage, prostomium with 2 large palps oriented forward 
and the body is heavily papillated. The body is rectangular in cross section, 
the longer side being the sides of the body and all neuropodia have a single 
strongly hooked seta.  



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