Spionidae

Boury-Esnault, Nicole, Bellan, Gerard, Bellan-Santini, Denise, Boudouresque, Charles-Francois, Chevaldonné, Pierre, Dias, Alrick, Faget, Daniel, Harmelin, Jean-Georges, Harmelin-Vivien, Mireille, Lejeusne, Christophe, Perez, Thierry, Vacelet, Jean & Verlaque, Marc, 2023, The Station Marine d’Endoume, Marseille: 150 years of natural history, Zootaxa 5249 (2), pp. 213-252 : 239

The poorly-known Spionidae genus Lindaspio (Annelida: Polychaeta) and the finding of Lindaspio sebastiena Bellan, Dauvin & Laubier, 2003 ( Fig. 11 ), from an oil-field off Congo (Western Africa)

The genus Lindaspio was created by Blake & Maciolek (1992), to accommodate two original spionid polychaetes species recovered from two different sedimented deep-sea hydrothermal vent areas in the Pacific. Later, polychaete material obtained from sediment at 150 m depth near an oil platform of the offshore oil field of N’Kossa, Congo (Central Western Africa), yielded a third species, Lindaspio sebastiena Bellan, Dauvin & Laubier, 2003 . Other reports of this genus are very rare, the last one being a yet undescribed Lindaspio species from a whale-fall site on the S„o Paulo Ridge ( Sumida et al. 2016). The four species therefore appear to share a preference for reducing environments such as deep-sea sediments rich in decaying organic matter or hydrothermal fluids. Among their peculiarities, these species display unusually large gills, likely an adaptation to life in low-oxygen environments; in L. sebastiena , gills even display a “felting” that may be useful in further increasing gill surface area.

Figures

FIGURE 11. Lindaspio sebastiena: Left, anterior part. Right: “Felting” visible on notopodial branchiae. Modified from Bellan et al. (2003).