Branchiomma boholense (Grube, 1878)

Keppel, Erica, Tovar, Maria Ana & Ruiz, Gregory, 2015, First record and establishment of Branchiomma coheni (Polychaeta: Sabellidae) in the Atlantic Ocean and review of non – indigenous species of the genus, Zootaxa 4058 (4), pp. 499-518 : 508

Branchiomma boholense (Grube, 1878)

Branchiomma boholense was originally described from the Phillipines. According to Knight-Jones et al. (1991), who examined type material of B. boholense , it is a common species in the Indo-West Pacific and occurs in the Mediterranean Sea. It was reported by Çinar (2005) from Turkey but in a later work it was recognized as B. bairdi ( Çinar 2009) . Roman et al. (2009) provided the first record of B. boholense in the western Mediterranean, as well as the most detailed description and illustrations of morphological features available to date. Surprisingly, this species has not been reported in previous or subsequent papers on sabellid worms in the Mediterranean (Licciano & Giangrande 2008; Giangrande et al. 2012), and Çinar (2009) suggested the re-examination of all the Mediterranean material identified as B. boholense because these or at least some might be B. bairdi . Both species have similar uncini, bearing 2–3 rows of teeth over the main fang, but also a remarkable difference: B. boholense has 1–4 pairs of flattened, tongue-like macrostylodes whereas in B. bairdi two pairs of strap–like macrostylodes are present ( Knight-Jones et al. 1991; Roman et al. 2009; Tovar-Hernández et al. 2009a, b). Consequently, detailed reexamination of specimens reported as B. bairdi or B. boholense is needed because both species are NIS in the Mediterranean Sea and both have distinctive morphological features.