Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica. Volum 19 (2021) Pàgines: 1-6

Findings of Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) (Nemertea, Heteronemertea, Lineidae) in the Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Rhodes

Insacco, G., Zava, B., Corsini-Foka, M.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32800/amz.2021.19.0001

Descarregar

PDF

Paraules clau

Nemertea, Notospermus geniculatus, Distribució, Sicília, Rodes, Mediterrani

Cita

Insacco, G., Zava, B., Corsini-Foka, M., 2021. Findings of Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) (Nemertea, Heteronemertea, Lineidae) in the Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Rhodes. Arxius de Miscel·lània Zoològica, 19: 1-6, DOI: https://doi.org/10.32800/amz.2021.19.0001

Data de recepció:

14/12/2020

Data d'acceptació:

20/01/2021

Data de publicació:

08/02/2021

Compartir

Visites

316

Descàrregues

131

Abstract

Findings of Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) (Nemertea, Heteronemertea, Lineidae) in the Mediterranean islands of Sicily and Rhodes

The findings of Notospermus geniculatus from Sicily in 2019 and 2020 and from Rhodes Island in 2008 are documented, extending knowledge concerning the distribution of this ribbon worm in the Mediterranean basin.

Key words: Nemertea, Notospermus geniculatus, Distribution, Sicily, Rhodes, Mediterranean Sea

Resumen

Hallazgos de Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) (Nemertea, Heteronemertea, Lineidae) en las islas mediterráneas de Sicilia y Rodas

Se documentan los hallazgos de Notospermus geniculatus en Sicilia en 2019 y 2020 y en Rodas en 2008, ampliando el conocimiento sobre la distribución de este nemertino en la cuenca del Mediterráneo.

Palabras clave: Nemertea, Notospermus geniculatus, Distribución, Sicilia, Rodas, Mediterráneo

Resum

Troballes de Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) (Nemertea, Heteronemertea, Lineidae) a les illes mediterrànies de Sicília i Rodes

Es documenten les troballes de Notospermus geniculatus a Sicília el 2019 i el 2020 i a Rodes el 2008, amb la qual cosa s’amplia el coneixement sobre la distribució d’aquest nemertí a la conca del Mediterrani.

Paraules clau: Nemertea, Notospermus geniculatus, Distribució, Sicília, Rodes, Mediterrani

Introduction

The nemertean Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) is a marine non-segmented ribbon worm. Slightly flattened dorso-ventrally, it can reach up to 1 m in length and 15 mm in width, and it has the ability to contract (Coe, 1940; Jiang and Deng, 2018). This benthic worm lives in lower shore intertidal to sublittoral depths of 30 m or more, in kelp holdfasts, under stones and boulders on sand or muddy sand, and in crevices in rocks and corals (Gibson, 1995). Benthic nemerteans are basically carnivorous predators; they prey not only on various organisms, primarily polychaetes and crustaceans, using their rapidly everted proboscis and potent toxins, but also on recently dead organisms (McDermott and Roe, 1985; Thiel and Kruse, 2001).

The species was originally described from the marine region of Naples (Italy) as Polia geniculata Delle Chiaje, 1828 (Delle Chiaje, 1828), and rediscribed as Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) by Riser (1991). It has been reported under several synonymised names (Norenburg et al., 2019).

Notospermus geniculatus is a cosmopolitan species with a worldwide distribution comprehending: the Black Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Canary Islands, the Gulf of Guinea (West Africa), the Atlantic coasts of south Iberian Peninsula, western Pacific waters (Japan, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand), and western coasts of tropical America (Gulf of California, Panama and Peru) (Riser, 1991; Gibson, 1995; Kajihara, 2007; Chernyshev, 2011; Herrera-Bachiller et al., 2015). In the Mediterranean Sea its occurrence is reported from the coasts of the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands, Spain (Herrera-Bachiller et al., 2015; Fernández-Álvarez et al., 2017), from France, southern coasts and Corse (Ueda, 2020), from Italy (Relini, 2008; Natural History Museum, 2014; Ferranti et al., 2015; Tiscar, 2015; Orrell, 2019), from Croatia (Ueda, 2020), from Greece and Malta (Riser, 1991) [for Greece, see also Discussion], along the Levantine Sea and the Aegean Sea coasts of Turkey (Okuş, 2004; Yokes and Demir, 2013; Çinar, 2014) and from Israel (Ramos-Esplá and Valle Pérez, 2004; Hoffman and Kajihara, 2020). A record from South Africa is of uncertain validity (Gibson, 1995).

As emphasized by Fernández-Álvarez et al. (2017), N. geniculatus is probably a common species in the Mediterranean basin but not widely recorded in taxonomic lists. In this work we report the findings of specimens of this ribbon worm from southern Sicily (Italy) and Rhodes Island (Greece).

Material and methods

One ribbon worm (specimen A) was collected on 02/10/2019 by hand, under a stone at Porto Ulisse, Ispica (Ragusa), southeast of Sicily (36.6961 °N, 14.9908 °E), at a depth of 2 m, in a sandy area with sparse Posidonia oceanica and Caulerpa prolifera meadows interrupted by rocks; this specimen A is stored in ethanol at the collection of the Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Comiso (MSNC) (Ragusa), Italy, with catalogue number MSNC 4792. A second sample (specimen B) was captured on 27/03/2020, using the same method and at the same location as above; it was photographed, identified and measured at the MSNC and subsequently released. A third individual (specimen C) was collected by hand on 11/06/2008 at Faliraki, Rhodes Island, southeastern Aegean Sea, Greece (36.350 ºN, 28.208 ºE), buried on sand under a small rock, at a depth of 1 m; the specimen C is preserved in ethanol at the collection of the Hydrobiological Station of Rhodes (HSR), Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece, with the catalogue number HSR145.

Results

All three nemertean specimens were identified as N. geniculatus following Gibson and Sundberg (2001). The head region resembled a spatula. The opening of the alimentary canal and the opening of the proboscis apparatus (the rhynchopore, the opening of the rhynchocoel, where the proboscis is stored) were separate, as in all heteronemerteans. In specimens A and C, deposited at the MSNC and HSR collections, lateral horizontal cephalic slits were observed, while a caudal cirrus was not present at the posterior end. The coloration varied from dark green to dark brown with whitish transversal rings at quite regular distances, with the first ring complete and V shaped, on the head (fig. 1). The length of the fresh specimens A (fig. 1) and B was respectively 49 cm and 13 cm, while specimen C, in ethanol, measured 41 cm. Specimen A was a female, while the sex of specimen C was not determined.

Fig. 1. Live Notospermus geniculatus (specimen A) from Pozzallo, Sicily, Italy (length 49 cm). Fig. 1. Ejemplar vivo de Notospermus geniculatus (espécimen A) hallado en Pozzallo, Sicilia, Italia (longitud 49 cm).

Discussion

Although the ribbon worm N. geniculatus is widely distributed in Italian waters (Relini, 2008; Ferranti et al., 2015), its occurrence in Sicily was known only from the area of Trapani, at the northwest of the island (Huschke, 1830; Riser, 1991; Kajihara, 2007). The records reported in the present study from the southern waters of the island increase knowledge on its distribution.

The species is widely distributed from the south to the north of the Asia Minor Peninsula, along the Aegean coasts of Turkey (Okuş, 2004; Yokes and Demir, 2013). In the Hellenic waters of the Aegean, Ionian and Levantine seas, the presence of the species is scarcely documented. Concerning the eastern Aegean Sea, an old sample, collected in 1965 from Chios Island, at the northeast of the basin, is deposited at the British Museum of Natural History London (Riser, 1991; Natural History Museum, 2014); another sample, collected on 10 August 2005, at a depth of 2 m from Symi Island, is deposited at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (Orrell, 2019), while a specimen was observed in Lesvos Island in 2019 (Ueda, 2020). In the Ionian Sea, the presence of N. geniculatus was vreported from Corfu Island in June 2015 (https://www.facebook.com/pg/Corfu-Museum-420662671375619/posts/). Although the finding from Rhodes could be expected, as the island is few miles south to the island of Symi, Greece, and to the Datça peninsula, Turkey, where it occurs frequently (Okuş, 2004), it adds knowledge to the poorly known occurrence of the species in the Hellenic waters.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the citizens’ science divers H. Hatzialexiou (Rhodes, Greece) and T. Giunta (Pozzallo, Italy) for providing the specimens of the ribbon worms studied in this work and the information on their collection. They also thank the reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments that greatly improved the initial version of the manuscript.

References

Chernyshev A. V., 2011. Nemertean worms (Nemertea) of the Vietnamese coastal waters. In: Proceedings of the Workshop coastal marine biodiversity and bioresources of Vietnam and adjacent areas to the south China Sea, Nha Trang, Vietnam, November 24-25: 21-25 (K. A. Lutaenko, Ed.). Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), Vladivostok-Nha Trang Dalnauka.
Coe, W. R., 1940. Revision of the Nemertea fauna of the Pacific coasts of North, Central and northern South America. Allan Hancock Pacific Expedition, 2 (13): 247-323.
Çinar, M. E., 2014. Checklist of the phyla Platyhelminthes, Xenacoelomorpha, Nematoda, Acanthocephala, Myxozoa, Tardigrada, Cephalorhyncha, Nemertea, Echiura, Brachiopoda, Phoronida, Chaetognatha, and Chordata (Tunicata, Cephalochordata, and Hemichordata) from the coasts of Turkey. Turkish Journal of Zoology, 38: 698-722, Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3906/zoo-1405-70
Delle Chiaje, S., 1828. Memorie sulla storia e anotomia degli animali senza vertebre del regno di Napoli, Vol. III. Società Tipografica, Napoli.
Fernández-Álvarez, F. Á., Acevedo, I., Rodríguez-Flores, P. C., 2017. On the presence of Baseodiscus delineatus and Notospermus geniculatus in Formentera Island. In: New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records (March 2017): 181-182 (L. Lipej, I. Acevedo, E. Akel, A. Anastasopoulou, A. Angelidis, E. Azzurro, L. Castriota, M. Çelik, L. Cilenti, F. Crocetta, A. Deidun, A. Dogrammatzi, M. Falautano, F. Fernández-Álvarez, R. Gennaio, G. Insacco, S. Katsanevakis, J. Langeneck, B. Lombardo, G. Mancinelli, C. Mytilineou, L. Papa, V. Pitacco, M. Pontes, D. Poursanidis, E. Prato, S. Rizkalla, P. Rodríguezflores, C. Stamouli, J. Tempesti, F. Tiralongo, S. Tirnettα, K. Tsirintanis, C. Turan, D. Yaglioglu, G. Zaminos, B. Zava). Mediterranean Marine Science, 18(1): 179-201. Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, https://epublishing.ekt.gr/
Ferranti, M. P., Betti, F., Bo, M., De La Fuente Mancebo, G., Di Camillo, C. G., Di Franco, A., Di Martino, E., Fava, F., Giaccone, T., Giussani, V., Matrone, M., Mussat Sartor, R., Musco, L., Pica, D., Ragazzola, F., Renzi, M., Scinto, A., Sinagra, A., Tazioli, S., Bertolino, M., 2015. App Pinneggiando: Technology at the service of marine biology. Biologia Marina Mediterranea, 22(1): 223-224.
Gibson, R., 1995. Nemertean genera and species of the world: an annotated checklist of original names and description citations, synonyms, current taxonomic status, habitats and recorded zoogeographic distribution. Journal of Natural History, 29(2): 271-561, Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00222939500770161
Gibson, R., Sundberg, P., 2001. Some Nemerteans (Nemertea) from Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Zoological Science, 18: 1259-1273.
Herrera-Bachiller, A., Fernández-Álvarez, F. Á., Junoy, J., 2015. A Taxonomic Catalogue of the Nemerteans (Phylum Nemertea) of Spain and Portugal. Zoological Science, 32(6): 507-522, Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2108/zs140242
Hoffman, R., Kajihara, H., 2020. First report of Evelineus mcintoshii (Langerhans, 1880) (Heteronemertea, Lineidae) from the Mediterranean Sea. Mediterranean Marine Science, 21(3): 664-667, Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/mms.24421
Huschke, E., 1830. Beschreibung und Anatomie eines neuen an Sicilien gefundenen Meerwurms, Notospermus drepanensis. Oken’s Isis, 23: 681-683.
Jiang, J., Deng, R., 2018. Characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome of Notospermus geniculatus. Mitochondrial DNA Part B, 3(2): 1143-1144, Doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23802359.2018.1522976
Kajihara, H., 2007. A Taxonomic Catalogue of Japanese Nemerteans (Phylum Nemertea). Zoological Science, 24: 287-326, Doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.2108/zsj.24.287
Lipej, L., Acevedo, I., Akel, E., Anastasopoulou, A., Angelidis, A., Azzurro, E., Castriota, L., Çelik, M., Cilenti, L., Crocetta, F., Deidun, A., Dogrammatzi, A., Falautano, M., Fernández-Álvarez, F., Gennaio, R., Insacco, G., Katsanevakis, S., Langeneck, J., Lombardo, B., Mancinelli, G., Mytilineou, C., Papa, L., Pitacco, V., Pontes, M., Poursanidis, D., Prato, E., Rizkalla, S., Rodríguezflores, P., Stamouli, C., Tempesti, J., Tiralongo, F., Tirnettα, S., Tsirintanis, K., Turan, C., Yaglioglu, D., Zaminos, G., Zava, B., 2017. New Mediterranean Biodiversity Records (March 2017). Mediterranean Marine Science, 18(1): 179-201, Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/mms.2068
McDermott J. J., Roe P., 1985. Food, feeding behavior and feeding ecology of Nemerteans. American Zoology, 25: 113-125.
Natural History Museum, 2014. Dataset: Collection specimens. Resource: Specimens. Natural History Museum Data Portal (data.nhm.ac.uk), Doi: https://doi.org/10.5519/0002965
Norenburg, J., Gibson, R., Herrera Bachiller, A., Strand, M., 2019. World Nemertea Database. Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828). In: World Register of Marine Species. Available online at: http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=122586 [Accessed on 13 September 2019].
Okuş, E. (Project Manager), 2004. Marine Biological Diversity Assessment of Datça-Bozburun Specially Protected Area. Istanbul University, Institute of Marine Sciences and Management, Final Report.
Orrell, T., 2019. NMNH Extant Specimen Records. Version 1.23. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/hnhrg3 [Accessed via GBIF.org on 15 September 2019].
Ramos-Esplá, A. A., Valle Pérez, C., 2004. Marine Biodiversity Study of the Rosh Haniqra-Akhziv Nature Reserves (Israel) to the Establishment of a Management Plan. Regional Project for the Development of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas in the Mediterranean Region (MedMPA) Final Report (Activity MP4), UNEP.
Relini, G. (Ed.), 2008. Checklist della flora e della fauna dei mari italiani. Parte I. Nemertea. Biologia Marina Mediterranea, 15 (suppl.): 127-134.
Riser, N. W., 1991. New Zealand nemertines from kelp holdfasts: Heteronemertinea II. Notospermus geniculatus (Delle Chiaje, 1828) n. comb. New Zealand Journal of Zoology, 18: 427-438.
Thiel, M., Kruse, I., 2001. Status of the Nemertea as predators in marine ecosystems. Hydrobiologia, 456: 21-32.
Tiscar, P. G. (Ed.), 2015. Attività A – Studio e analisi del benthos di fondale sabbioso e fondale roccioso e del necton presente nel SIC interesse di studio. In: Convenzione di ricerca tra il Consorzio Gestione Area Marina Protetta Torre del Cerrano e l’Università degli Studi di Teramo per attività di ricerca relativa alla realizzazione degli interventi previsti nel Piano di Gestione del Sito di Interesse Comunitario IT7120215: 1-93. Università degli studi di Teramo, Facoltà di Medicina Veterinaria, Relazione tecnica.
Ueda, K., 2020. iNaturalist Research-grade Observations. iNaturalist.org. Occurrence dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/ab3s5x [accessed via GBIF.org on 26 May 2020, https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/2294559370].
Yokeş, M. B., Demir, V., 2013. Ayvalık Adaları Tabiat Parkı Denizel Biyolojik Çeşitlilik Çalışması- Determination Work on Marine Biodiversity at Ayvalık Adaları Nature Park. PIMS 3697: Strengthening the System of the Marine and Coastal Protected Areas of Turkey. Technical Report Series, 20: 1-104.

Contingut ressenyat a: