Biodiversity Data Journal
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The species of the family Opheliidae Malmgren, 1867 are widespread worldwide, from shallow to deep seas, and mainly occur in sandy sediments.
Opheliidae are burrowing deposit-feeding polychaetes characterized by a pointed prostomium, a smooth cuticle and a prominent ventral furrow.
Opheliidae currently comprise 172 species belonging to eight genera.
So far, six species have been recorded in Northeast Asia: Thoracophelia arctica (Grube, 1866), Thoracophelia ezoensis Okuda, 1936, Thoracophelia japonica (Misaka & Sato, 2003), Thoracophelia minuta Jimi et al. , 2021, Thoracophelia williamsi (Hartman, 1938) and Thoracophelia yasudai Okuda, 1934 (Song et al. 2017, Jimi et al. 2021). Of these species, one, Thoracophelia williamsi, has been reported in South Korea (Song et al. 2017).
Thoracophelia foliformis was discovered in the intertidal zone of the Yellow Sea in South Korea, which is the first record of a Thoracophelia species from the Yellow Sea.
Samples were collected in the upper intertidal zone of the Yellow Sea in South Korea between March 2021 and June 2022, the sediment was gently sampled with a shovel and gently sieved with seawater to collect the polychaete samples.
Thoracophelia foliformis is closely related to Thoracophelia dillonensis (Hartman, 1938) from California and Thoracophelia ezoensis Okuda, 1936 from Japan, as it possesses pectinate branchiae.
However, Thoracophelia foliformis differs from these two species in the unique combination of the following features:
15 pairs of folded comb-like branches with 12-15 filaments in the best stage of development and a leaf-like median ventral plate in the pygidium instead of one or two thick ventral cirri.
The holotype complete with 38 chaetigers, 17.2 mm long, 1.6 mm wide in the thoracic region and 1.3 mm wide in the abdominal region. Paratypes with 37-38 chain links, 11.1-24.2 mm long, 1.3-2.0 mm wide. Live specimens are reddish in color and the body wall is transparent.
The reddish color is the color of living worms.
Literature reference:
Lee H-E, Lee GH, Min G-S
(2024) A new species of Thoracophelia (Annelida, Opheliidae) from the Yellow Sea of South Korea.
Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e129526. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.12.e129526
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Opheliidae are burrowing deposit-feeding polychaetes characterized by a pointed prostomium, a smooth cuticle and a prominent ventral furrow.
Opheliidae currently comprise 172 species belonging to eight genera.
So far, six species have been recorded in Northeast Asia: Thoracophelia arctica (Grube, 1866), Thoracophelia ezoensis Okuda, 1936, Thoracophelia japonica (Misaka & Sato, 2003), Thoracophelia minuta Jimi et al. , 2021, Thoracophelia williamsi (Hartman, 1938) and Thoracophelia yasudai Okuda, 1934 (Song et al. 2017, Jimi et al. 2021). Of these species, one, Thoracophelia williamsi, has been reported in South Korea (Song et al. 2017).
Thoracophelia foliformis was discovered in the intertidal zone of the Yellow Sea in South Korea, which is the first record of a Thoracophelia species from the Yellow Sea.
Samples were collected in the upper intertidal zone of the Yellow Sea in South Korea between March 2021 and June 2022, the sediment was gently sampled with a shovel and gently sieved with seawater to collect the polychaete samples.
Thoracophelia foliformis is closely related to Thoracophelia dillonensis (Hartman, 1938) from California and Thoracophelia ezoensis Okuda, 1936 from Japan, as it possesses pectinate branchiae.
However, Thoracophelia foliformis differs from these two species in the unique combination of the following features:
15 pairs of folded comb-like branches with 12-15 filaments in the best stage of development and a leaf-like median ventral plate in the pygidium instead of one or two thick ventral cirri.
The holotype complete with 38 chaetigers, 17.2 mm long, 1.6 mm wide in the thoracic region and 1.3 mm wide in the abdominal region. Paratypes with 37-38 chain links, 11.1-24.2 mm long, 1.3-2.0 mm wide. Live specimens are reddish in color and the body wall is transparent.
The reddish color is the color of living worms.
Literature reference:
Lee H-E, Lee GH, Min G-S
(2024) A new species of Thoracophelia (Annelida, Opheliidae) from the Yellow Sea of South Korea.
Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e129526. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.12.e129526
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
