Procerodes plebeius (Schmidt, 1861)

Sluys, Ronald & Kawakatsu, Masaharu, 2005, Biodiversity of marine planarians revisited (Platyhelminthes, Tricladida, Maricola), Journal of Natural History 39 (6), pp. 445-467 : 462-463

Procerodes plebeius (Schmidt, 1861)

( Figure 28 )

Material examined

ZMA V.Pl. 954.1, Sandgerdhi (64 ° 039N, 22 ° 439W), Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland, August 1999, sagittal sections on one slide ; V.Pl. 954.2, ibid., sagittal sections on three slides ; V.Pl. 954.3, ibid., sagittal sections on one slide .

Comparative discussion

In particular, this species of Procerodes is characterized by a well-developed penial papilla provided with a thick zone of circular muscle ( Figure 28 ). The species P. plebeius differs from P. dohrni Wilhelmi, 1909 , which also exhibits a thick zone of circular muscle on the penial papilla, by the presence of a copulatory bursa that is absent in the latter.

The present record for Iceland considerably extends the known range of the species since thus far it had been reported from Cephalonia, Crete, Black Sea and southern England, where it was found in brackish habitats. In Iceland, P. plebeius was collected from the extreme upper littoral, in coarse sand. At the same locality P. littoralis (Ström, 1768) was present, albeit on Fucus sp. , a species of marine triclad that is also known to occur in brackish localities and that was already known from Iceland (cf. Sluys 1989).

Figures

Figures 28–30. Procerodes plebeius and Uteriporus pacificus? (28) P. plebeius, V.Pl. 954.2, photomicrograph of penial papilla. (29) U. pacificus?, sagittal reconstruction of the copulatory apparatus (from Poljakova, 1991: figure 15B; labels adapted according to current terminology). (30) U. pacificus, specimen BC 7-5 (ZMA), photomicrograph of horizontal section of the receptacular duct; anterior to the left.