Siphonosoma australe australe (Keferstein, 1865)

Acd, 2000, Sipuncula from Hainan Island (China), Journal of Natural History 34, pp. 2187-2207 : 2190-2192

Siphonosoma australe australe (Keferstein, 1865)

Material. Tielou gang, 28 March 1992, 16 specimens.

Description. Trunk 116±210 mm long and 12±16 mm wide. Introvert, 160±210 mm in length, carries hooks in rings, about 350 m m in height (®gure 2a). Longitudinal bands of the body wall musculature are often visible through the skin. Nephridia are free. Contractile vessel with bulbous vesicles. Rectum is simple.

Discussion. The bulbous vesicles of the contractile vessel which do not form villi (sensu Cutler and Cutler, 1982), the hook rings of the introvert and the absence

of rectal caeca are characteristic of this species. The hooks exceed the measures given in Cutler (1994). However, Haldar (1991) reported specimens with hooks of 350 m m in height. This, in turn, allows us to separate the investigated specimens from the other subspecies (S. a. takatsukii SatoÃ, 1935) hooks of which are shorter, 130± 140 m m.

Siphonosom a a. australe shows a tropical and subtropical distribution. It is known from the Indian Ocean and from areas of the Paci®c Ocean. As the species was collected previously in the area investigated, there are records from Indochina (Leroy, 1942), Vietnam (Murina, 1989), Hainan (Chen, 1963; Li et al., 1992a, 1993), and other parts of South China (Li, 1985a, 1985b). It inhabits, as all the species of Siphonosoma , sandy and muddy bottoms of the intertidal and shallow subtidal zones.

2014 February 14 34: 02 at] Bath of University [by Downloaded