Morphology and reproductive biology of a new Pseudopolydora (Annelida: Spionidae) species from the Arabian Gulf
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Morphology and reproductive biology of a new Pseudopolydora (Annelida: Spionidae) species from the Arabian Gulf Vasily I. Radashevsky 1
&
Manal Al-Kandari 2
Received: 1 August 2020 / Revised: 16 September 2020 / Accepted: 23 September 2020 # Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung 2020
Abstract The Asian Pacific spionid polychaete worm Pseudopolydora paucibranchiata (Okuda, 1937) has been repeatedly reported from the Arabian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. Our recent molecular study showed that the Pacific and the Arabian populations of these worms are not conspecific. Here we describe adult, gamete, and larval morphology of worms from the Arabian Gulf, Kuwait, as the new species Pseudopolydora arabica sp. nov. Adults are characterized by the presence of intense yellow pigment on the prostomium, the dorsal side of the anterior chaetigers, and up to 50 ramified yellow chromatophores on each palp. Males produce thread-like wavy spermatophores about 10 μm in diameter and up to 2 mm long. Females store sperm in seminal receptacles on the dorsal side of fertile chaetigers and lay up to 1500 eggs into 35 capsules joined to each other in a string; each is attached by one stalk to the inner wall of the tube. Eggs are 100−103 μm in diameter, with smooth and thin envelopes, which develop into 3chaetiger larvae inside the capsules. Hatched larvae are planktotrophic and settle and metamorphose at about 17 chaetigers. Adults inhabit silty tubes in soft sediments forming aggregations of up to 50,000 individuals per 1 m2. Keywords Polychaete . Systematics . Reproduction . Larval development . Kuwait
Introduction Pseudopolydora Czerniavsky, 1881 is a genus of spionid polychaete worms with 22 named species (Read and Fauchald 2020). Most of these species were originally described from the West Pacific, probably from within their native range. Some of these species were transported by ships and/or with commercial oyster movements in aquaculture operations and became successfully established outside of the West Pacific (Radashevsky et al. 2020). Very few species
This article is registered in ZooBank under http://zoobank.org/469D22934BCC-4C3F-A4C5-4540ED03D1DE Communicated by P. C. Paiva * Vasily I. Radashevsky [email protected] 1
A.V. Zhirmunsky National Scientific Center of Marine Biology, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 17 Palchevsky Street, Vladivostok, Russia 690041
2
Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, 22107 Salmiya, Kuwait
were described from the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, and the origin of those species remains uncertain. From the Indian Ocean, P. kempi (Southern, 1921) was described 100 years ago from the Chingrighatta Canal, Kolkata (Calcutta, India), and three species, P. dayii Simon, 2009; P. eriyali Simon, Sato-Okoshi & Abe, 2017; and P. uphondo Simon, Sato-Okoshi & Abe, 2017, were recently described from South Africa. Studies of polychaetes from the seas surrounding the Arabian Peninsula were reviewed by Wehe and Fiege (2002) and Al-Kandari et al. (20
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