Dear all,
The mail below has been sent before, but since my email has changed to harry.tenhove from ncbnaturalis.nl<mailto:harry.tenhove from ncbnaturalis.nl> it apparently was rejected by the system. If not so, I apologize for sending it again.
Murray at all deal with a worrying development, the aquarium trade of ornamental worms. I know from personal experience (several expeditions) that collecting these animals can be rather destructive to the coral reefs and further hard bottom communities.
Interestingly, the only certain serpulid, Figure 1 e), has not been given a scientific name. Presently Protula bispiralis (Savigny, 1822) might do, but the more colour photographs I see, the more I get the feeling that this in reality is a complex of species. Might be interesting if someone could provide material for DNA from localities as wide apart as New Zealand, Indonesia, and Seychelles.
As for figure 1 c), my gut feeling screams “serpulid”, but I cannot remember having ever seen this muddy color for a Spirobranchus with spiral radioles (and I only see 1 whorl, while serpulids have two). A few words of warning anyhow would not be out of order, not all “hard tube” with “spiral” radioles belong to Protula bispiralis. The Christmas-tree worms, Spirobranchus notably of the giganteus-complex (circum (sub)tropical some 12 species), also show these whorls but are operculate, except for 1 species (Spirobranchus nigranucha). On internet sites they commonly are mixed up with Protula, as well as a number of other larger serpulids and/or sabellids. Protula bispiralis, by the way can reach an almost twice as large size as the Spirobranchus species, a tube of 1 to 2 cm internal diameter, while Spirobranchus stops at about 8 mm (and the respectable age of about 35 years).
There are a number of popular identification guides (e.g. Kuiter & Debelius 2009: 60) even mentioning some spiralised phoronidea as Protula.
Wormly,
Harry A. ten Hove
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu [mailto:annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu] Namens Matt Bentley
Verzonden: donderdag 5 januari 2012 10:38
Aan: annelida from magpie.bio.indiana.edu
Onderwerp: [Annelida] Happy New Year and new paper.
Dear colleagues,
A very happy new year to you all!
Some of you may be interested in our new paper: Murray et al (2012) on 'Managing the Marine Aquarium Trade: Revealing the Data Gaps using Ornamental Polychaetes' published in PLoS One.
You can access this at: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029543
With very best wishes for 2012.
Matt
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Harry A. ten Hove
