Dear Colleagues,
The type region of Capitella capitata (O. Fabricius, 1780, originally as
Lumbricus) is the Frederikshaab/Paamiut area of SW Greenland. Fabricius does
not seem to have given any place names for localities for the different
species, therefore my use of region or area.
Otto Fabricius lived in Frederikshaab/Paamiut. The closest recently sampled
marine locality to this is the Ikka Fjord, where people from the Zoological
Museum, University of Copenhagen (ZMUC, now changed to SNM, The Natural
History Museum of Denmark) and colleagues from elsewhere studied and sampled
different parts of the fjord in connection with a study of the Ikka columns,
but it is unlikely that Fabricius ever saw this fjord. I have not been to
Greenland, but Fabricius very clearly states that the species he describes
is a sand-bottom species (see below), and not from mud.
Except for the formatting (I have not centered anything), and overlooked
typos, the following is an exact copy of a translation of the Latin text on
Lumbricus capitatus in Otto Fabricius’ Fauna Groenlandica
, kindly made
available by the Translation Bureau of the National Museums of Canada,
through a request from Judy Fournier, who also helped us to get translations
of many Russian papers. The species treated are all numbered. L. capitatus
is No. 263. Comments in square brackets [ ] are mine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[Page 22 of translation]
“263. LUMBRICUS CAPITATUS.*” [The asterisk denotes that this is a new
species.]
Lumbricus, red, with four rows of aculei, anteriorly thicker,
very thin posteriorly.
Lumbricus littoralis minor, Ol.611, b.
[Eggert Olafssens og Bjarne Povelsens Rejse igiennem Island Soröe 1772.
(Travels through the Icelandic Soröe by Eggert Olafssen and Bjarne Povelsen
1772). [Fabricius considered this a synonym.]
