Sabellariidae 187 



Bibliography 



Grave, B. H. 1933. Rate of growth, age at sexual maturity and duration of life 

 of certain sessile organisms at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Biol. Bull. 65:380. 



Hatscheck, B. 1885. Entwicklung der Trochophora von Eupomatus uncinaliis 

 (Serpula uncinata) . Arch. Zool. Inst. Wien. 6. 



Shearer, C. 1911. On the development and structure of the trochophore of Hy- 

 droides uncinatus. Quart. J. Micr. Sci. 56 : 543. 



Zeleny, C. 1906. The rearing of serpulid larvae. Biol. Bull. 8:308. 



Family sabellariidae 



SABELLARIA VULGARIS 



Alex B. Novikoff, Brooklyn College 



Sabellaria vulgaris is a sedentary polychaete found along the Atlantic 

 coast from North Carolina to Cape Cod (Pratt, 1935). The observations 

 recorded here are based on experiments with worms dredged from a depth 

 of sixty to eighty feet in the waters of Tarpaulin Cove in Vineyard 

 Sound, near Woods Hole, Massachusetts.* The animals are abundant 

 and are easily collected in this rather limited area. 



The worms live within sand tubes which they build on stones, empty 

 sanddollar and oyster shells, and occasionally on Bryozoa nodules and 

 Limulus shells. Males and females are about equal in number in the 

 collections. The sexes can be recognized externally only in those fully 

 mature animals which contain a large number of either eggs or sperm. 

 The abdominal segments, which are greatly distended, are dense white 

 in the male and a decided pink in the female. The eggs or sperm are 

 shed almost immediately after the animals are removed from their tubes. 

 The number of gametes shed is greatest from those animals which have a 

 pronounced color in the abdominal segments, but even animals which 

 show neither the distinct white nor pink color may shed abundantly. 



Animals collected throughout the greater part of the summer showed 

 no apparent differences in the condition of their gametes. Eggs from 

 worms dredged at irregular intervals during the periods, August 22 to 

 September 7, 1934 and June 24 to September 9, 1935, developed nor- 

 mally in more than ninety-five per cent of the cases.** The same high 

 percentage of normal development usually followed from eggs of animals 

 that had been kept in aquaria with running seawater for as long as 

 nine weeks. 



♦This work was carried on at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massa- 

 chusetts. 



** Verrill (1874, p. 317) states that "eggs are laid in May and June," and Waterman 

 (1934, p. 98) says that "the normal shedding time of May and June is followed by a 

 second but shorter period extending from about August first to fifteenth." 



