Hydroides bispinosa Bush, 1910

Figs 4A, 5

Hydroides bispinosa Bush, 1910: 496 (type locality: Bermuda, western Atlantic).

Hydroides crucigera (non Mörch 1863) – Rioja 1958: 250 –251 (Verde Island and Santiaguillo Island, Veracruz, eastern Mexico; on coral and mollusk shells). — Day 1973: 132 (Cape Hatteras and Beaufort, North Carolina; intertidal to 18 m).

Hydroides bispinosus – Díaz 1994: 618 (Barbados; settlement and succession experiments; 10 m; coral plates, on Montastrea annularis, now Orbicella annularis (Ellis & Solander, 1786)) . — Perkins 1998: 95 (checklist of shallow-water polychaetes from Florida). — Bastida-Zavala & Salazar-Vallejo 2000b: 844, fig. 1b–l (La Habana, Cuba, and eastern Mexico: Champotón, Campeche; Ría Lagartos and San Felipe, Yucatán; Contoy Island, Nichupté Lagoon and Cozumel Island, Quintana Roo; intertidal to 4 m, on seagrass, algae, sponges, rocks, wood dock pilings). — Bastida-Zavala & ten Hove 2002: 125 –127, figs 11A–I, 15 (Bermuda, Florida, Aruba and eastern Mexico: Campeche and Quintana Roo; 1–15 m, on pagurid carapace, rocks, wooden pier and coral debris).

Hydroides bispinosa – Wells & Gray 1964: 74 (Cape Hatteras, North Carolina; hard substrates). — ten Hove & Wolf 1984: 55-18 –55-21, figs 55-13, 55-14a–m (western Florida; 19–43 m, coarse to silty sand).

Hydroides sanctaecrucis (non Krøyer in Mörch 1863) – Díaz-Díaz & Liñero-Arana 2001: 11, 13–14, figs 2a–f, 3g–l (Cariaco Gulf, Venezuela; on PVC dock pilings; description and figure).

Material examined

Eight specimens: BB (8) Aug. 2004.

Diagnosis

Tube white; with two longitudinal ridges; without peristomes, transverse ridges or alveoli. Opercular peduncle smooth, white. Operculum funnel with 12–19 radii with blunt tips (Fig. 4A); verticil with 7–10 spines, curving abruptly inwards, almost geniculate, tip of spines pointed; dorsal spines somewhat longer; all spines with basal internal spinule and two lateral spinules in middle position, without external spinules, wings or central tooth (Fig. 4A). Special collar chaetae with two pointed-elongate teeth and distal blade with small teeth.

Taxonomic remarks

Rioja (1958) recorded Hydroides crucigera Mörch, 1863 from Veracruz, eastern Mexico, a species similar to H. bispinosa because of the presence of two lateral spinules in the verticil spines (Fig. 4A). However, from their brief description it is possible to deduce by the small number of funnel radii (14) that the specimen corresponds to H. bispinosa rather than to H. crucigera .

Hydroides bispinosa is frequently associated with calcareous substrates and occasionally found on PVC substrates (Díaz-Díaz & Liñero-Arana 2001). Weisbord (1964: 156) collected an empty tube from northern Venezuela, as H. aff. bispinosa, but identification to species with only the tube, in the genus Hydroides is doubtful.

Ecology

Intertidal to sublittoral (43 m, ten Hove & Wolf 1984). In tropical and subtropical marine areas, on coral, mollusk shells, seagrass, algae, sponges, rocks and artificial substrates

(Rioja 1958; Díaz 1994; Díaz-Díaz & Liñero-Arana 2001; Bastida-Zavala & Salazar-Vallejo 2000b; Bastida-Zavala & ten Hove 2002).

Distribution

Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea and eastern United States. In this work, Hydroides bispinosa was occasionally found on fouling plates from Biscayne Bay, Florida (Fig. 5).