A new species of the Marphysa sanguinea complex from French waters (Bay of Biscay, NE Atlantic) (Annelida, Eunicidae)

Abstract

A new species of Eunicidae, Marphysa victori sp. n., has been identified from Arcachon Bay, Bay of Biscay, NE Atlantic. This new species, belonging to the sanguinea complex, is characterised by branchiae with long filaments from chaetigers 26–34, the presence of four types of pectinate chaetae with first ones present from chaetiger 2, a large number of both pectinate chaetae and compound spinigers, and the pygidium with only one pair of pygidial cirri. An identification key for European species of the genus Marphysa is provided.

Digging the diversity of Iberian bait worms Marphysa (Annelida, Eunicidae)

“…� Complete mitochondrial genome. 1 Species identified as M. sanguinea in GenBank, but identification incorrect according to [3] and our study.…”

“…Since M. sanguinea redescription [29], two new species of the sanguinea-group were described from European and nearby locations, M. victori from the Bay of Biscay [3] and M. aegypti from the eastern Mediterranean, Suez Canal and Gulf of Suez [31], while we are here describing two more from the Bay of Cádiz. Similar situations occurred in other well studied coasts, such as Australia [29,52], South Africa [30], the Grand Caribbean [77], China [33,34] and Hong-Kong [51], where the presence of M. sanguinea proved to result from misidentifications or from a wrong use of the "cosmopolitan species" concept.…”

“…2 Genus updated, species is under Marphysa in GenBank. 3 This specimen belongs to the Marphysa bellii group (JZ, personal observation), which was recently considered to represent a different genus and described as Paucibranchia.…”

“…In addition to the intrinsic interest of the annelid polychaetes as ubiquitous and highly abundant members of virtually all marine benthic ecosystems, some of them are increasingly exploited commercially. There is a growing demand of these organisms as fishing baits and, thus, they are being harvested all around the world as an integral part of global coastal life [1,2], including Europe [3][4][5]. They have also been introduced in integrated polycultures to contribute managing organic matter and wastes produced by bivalves and fish [6], and are a natural source of proteins and omega-3 fatty acids so that they can be used as a nutritional resource and maturation diet in crustacean and fish aquaculture [1,7,8].…”

“…Bathymetrically, they occur mainly from intertidal to shallow subtidal depths, while the few species described from shelf to bathyal depths are generally poorly known and thus need further revision. Many intertidal species are a valuable biological and economical resource, widely used and highly appreciated as fishing baits for many decades in the Iberian Peninsula [13], but also elsewhere [3,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], being commonly known with the vernacular names of "rosca" or "gusana de sangre" in Spanish, or "blood worm", "rock worm" or "clam worm" in English. This includes the type species, M. sanguinea, originally described from Devon, UK and recently redescribed based on a neotype from a nearby locality [29,35,36].…”