One for Leslie

Hola Leslie .

Do you know this worm from the Caribbean ?

I will appreciate if you can help my friends from the National Aquarium . Pls see text below and pics attached .

Regards

Jose Alejandro

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Greetings from the Acuario Nacional of the Dominican Republic! Last year we noticed a new resident in one of our invertebrate exhibits (the spider crab exhibit). He got in through our open water system (we are right next to the ocean and we pump our water directly from it and dont have any type of chemical filtration etc). This resident i guess grew in our exhibit until it was noticed by our staff. We took a video and from it some pictures which we sent to Patricia Ramey from Rutgers (could`'t get a hold of Dr. Kristian Fauchald). She identified the polychaete as definitely a predator and down to the Family Eunicidae. The worm is aproximately 16 inches long, and very secretive, coming out of its hole only when fed, when it appears, grabs the morsel, and darts right back! Definitely very cool to watch! We would appreciate any help in identifying it a bit further! Thank you so much

Monica

Very cool! I love watching these guys. Patricia's right, family Eunicidae, and 99% likely to be genus Eunice but that's as far as I can go without having the worm in front of me. I don't recognize the species despite having worked with Caribbean animals before. That's not really surprising since there's about 200 species of Eunice worldwide. Kristen's seen far more live caribbean eunicids than I have so he might recognize it.

Eunicids are switch-hitters when it comes to feeding, that is, they tend to be generalists rather than strict predators. Aquarists with coral reef tanks have reported them eating detritus, algae, snails, fish food, scavenging dead & dying organisms, other worms, small crustaceans, hard corals, soft corals, etc. the largest species like the "bobbit worm" are even fish predators. They're hard to catch without taking the tank apart. Normally they won't come out completely out of their burrows. By leaving part of their bodies inside they can rapidly retract as soon as they detect danger. They're dioecious so unless there are both males & females Monica doesn't have to worry about a population explosion.

Thanks Leslie .

I will send your answer to Monica at the aquarium.

Regards

JA

Thank you Jose Alejandro and Leslie. I feel we are getting closer to nailing this worm's identity. Is there any way we can get in touch with Kristian?

Thanks again for all your efforts and knowledge

Monica