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Bristleworm

Polydora ciliata (Johnston 1838)

Brief Summary

provided by Ecomare
The bristle worm Polydora ciliata is a small tube worm. It makes short U-shaped tubes from mud. This worm can burrow itself into stones, chalk and limestone, muddy bottoms and even shells. Due to the massive amount of worms living on stones at the foot of dikes around the low-tide waterline, it can be very slippery from the layer of muddy tubes. If the worm is underwater, it will stick out its two thin tentacles to catch food. There are various species of these bristle worms which are practically identical.
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Distribution

provided by World Register of Marine Species
Bay of Fundy to Cape Hatteras

Reference

North-West Atlantic Ocean species (NWARMS)

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WoRMS Editorial Board
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Kennedy, Mary [email]

Distribution

provided by World Register of Marine Species
The widespread distribution claimed for Polydora ciliata of Australia, Indo-China, india, Red Sea, South Africa, Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean Sea and Falkland Islands.(Fauvel,1953), is incorrect. Polydora ciliata is only known with certainty from the type locality.

Reference

Day, J. H. (1967). [Sedentaria] A monograph on the Polychaeta of Southern Africa. Part 2. Sedentaria. British Museum (Natural History), London. pp. 459–842.

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WoRMS Editorial Board
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Edward Vanden Berghe [email]

Identification

provided by World Register of Marine Species
Polydora ciliata was frequently the name used during the early years of misidentification of Polydora-group species, before it was realized that there were in reality numerous species in the group. Note that Polydora ciliata is not a shell-borer. A recent rejection of identification as P. ciliata is in Rodewald et al (2021: 274) where they comment that: "Polydora cf. ciliata in Simon (2011) was identified according to Day (1967) who reported the species as boring into calcareous rock and 'lithothamnion' in southern Mozambique. The confusion between P. ciliata and P. websteri is not new and Blake & Kudenov (1978) even suggested that (all) early reports of P. ciliata as a shell-borer were likely of P. websteri. Furthermore, the name P. ciliata has erroneously been applied to multiple morphologically similar boring and non-boring species (Mustaquim 1988; Simon & Sato-Okoshi 2015), so the presence of P. ciliata in southern Africa is doubtful."

Reference

Rodewald, Nicola; Snyman, Reinette; Simon, Carol A. (2021). Worming its way in—Polydora websteri (Annelida: Spionidae) increases the number of non-indigenous shell-boring polydorin pests of cultured molluscs in South Africa. Zootaxa. 4969(2): 255-279.

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cc-by-4.0
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WoRMS Editorial Board
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Read, Geoffrey [email]