Alitta succinea (Leuckart, 1847)

Ribeiro, Rannyele Passos, Alves, Paulo Ricardo, Almeida, Zafira da Silva de & Ruta, Christine, 2018, A new species of Paraonis and an annotated checklist of polychaetes from mangroves of the Brazilian Amazon Coast (Annelida, Paraonidae), ZooKeys 740, pp. 1-34 : 7

Alitta succinea (Leuckart, 1847) Fig. 4

Type locality.

Helgoland and Cuxhaven, Germany (53°53'N, 8°37'E; estimated geolocation).

Material examined.

São Luís, 02°35'56"S, 44°21'11.8"W: one specimen, 6 September 2011 (NPM-Pol 083); two specimens, 27 January 2011 (NPM-Pol 876); complete and incomplete specimens. Caranguejos Island, 02°49'33.6"S, 44°28'51.1"W: one specimen, 20 October 2010 (NPM-Pol 877); complete and incomplete specimens.

Distribution.

Pacific Ocean: Australia, New Zealand, USA, Mexico. Indian Ocean: Red Sea. Atlantic Ocean: North Sea, Mediterranean Sea, South Africa, Canada, USA, Caribbean Sea, Brazil (state of Pará, Maranhão, Pernambuco, Bahia, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul, see Suppl. material 1).

Remarks.

This species was described as Nereis succinea ( Leuckart 1847), transferred to genus Neanthes ( Imajima 1972), and later to Alitta ( Bakken and Wilson 2005). The specimens examined in this study share the features of the specimens re-described by Villalobos-Guerrero and Carrera-Parra (2015), such as paragnaths present in all areas of the pharynx, homogomph spinigerous notochaetae, neurochaetae with heterogomph spinigers and homogomph and heterogomph falcigers and the widely expanded notopodial ligule in posterior parapodia. However they are smaller (major individual measuring 3.5 mm of length from the prostomium to the 25th chaetiger) than those described from the Caribbean Sea ( Espinosa et al. 2007) and southern-southeastern Brazil ( Amaral et al. 2005). On the other hand, specimens from northeastern Brazil measuring less than 5 mm length from the prostomium to the 25th chaetiger are considered recruits ( Sette et al. 2013). Therefore, we suggest all the individuals collected in this study are juveniles. Alitta succinea is widely distributed in the world with records in different environments. This species was recorded in mangroves from the Caribbean Sea ( Londoño-Mesa et al. 2002) and Brazil, including a record in Maranhão state ( Mochel 1997). This species is reported in environments with different salinity levels and has been considered as a euryhaline species ( Sato 2013).