Barbara,
It is a freshwater oligochaete belonging to the Family Enchytraeidae, Barbidrilus paucisetus Loden & Locy, 1980. According to Mark Wetzel et al.'s checklist of North American oligochaetes (http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~mjwetzel/FWOligoNAChklst.html) , B. paucisetus is the only species of Barbidrilus found here. Your friend is correct in his assessment of the setae. It should have ventral forked setae in segments II and III only. Cool find! I have yet to see one in Florida samples, but it has been reported from here as well.
Jennifer Davenport, M. Sc.
Terra Environmental Services, Inc.
101 16th Avenue South, Suite 4
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
Office: (727) 565-4661
Cell: (727) 967-8450
Fax: (727) 565-4663
-----Original Message-----
From: annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu [mailto:annelida-bounces from oat.bio.indiana.edu] On Behalf Of bdink from frontiernet.net
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 1:55 PM
To: Annelida from net.bio.net
Subject: [Annelida] strange worm
Hi All
Would anyone like to give an opinion on this worm?
A friend who is usually working with samples from freshwater benthics found a worm from the Ogeechee River, GA, that neither of us can ID. He doesn't have exact location info so it could be from a slightly estuarine environment. (The Ogechee flows directly into the Atlantic). It is mounted on a slide and the pictures are at 1000X for the first two images which are of the two ends of the worm and 40X on the whole worm (2mm or less length). He says the chaetae are only on one end of the worm in a cluster (looks like two clusters). There may be faint segmentation.
Barbara Dinkins
Dinkins Biological Consulting, LLC
(865) 938-7739 office
(865) &55-7110 cell
bdink from frontiernet.net
