Myriowenia, HARTMAN, 1960

Capa, Maria, Parapar, Julio & Hutchings, Pat, 2012, Phylogeny of Oweniidae (Polychaeta) based on morphological data and taxonomic revision of Australian fauna, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 166 (2), pp. 236-278 : 261-262

GENUS MYRIOWENIA HARTMAN, 1960

Myriowenia Hartman, 1960 ; Blake, 2000.

Diagnosis: Head with large anterior grooved palps and bilobed prostomium; mouth anteroventral, with ventral pharyngeal organ. Breakage groove between head and first segment. First three segments uniramous, with capillary notochaetae. Biramous segments with capillaries on notopodia and neuropodial tori with fewer than five rows of bidentate uncini, with teeth arranged in a vertical position, dissimilar in size and proximal larger.

Type species: Myriowenia californiensis Hartman, 1960 , by original designation.

Remarks: Members of this genus can be distinguished from others in the family by the presence of a pair of anterior grooved palps and anterior prostomial lobes. In addition, they display uncinal teeth dissimilar in size with the distal tooth being much smaller than the proximal one, a possible reason why some authors have considered this distal tooth as absent (e.g. Blake, 2000). The ornamentation of the capillary chaetae has also been proposed to be a possible distinguishing feature of Myriowenia as the ‘scales’ are smaller than in other genera ( Blake, 2000).