POLYCHAETE WORMS, PART 1 17 



1913, p. G18.— Kindle, 1917, p. 150.— Fauvel, 1923, p. 45, fig. lG,/-j.— Not 

 Treadwell, iJi Cowles, 1930, p. Zil ( = L. siiblevis). —Frocter, 1933, p. 136.— 

 Annenkova, 1937, p. 145; 1938, p. 129.— Treadwell, 1948, p. 14, fig. 4a.— 

 Miner, 1950, p. 303, pi. 99.— Pratt, 1951, p. 327, fig. 449.— Wesenberg- 

 Lund, 1951, p. 19; 1958, p. 26.— Berkeley and Berkeley, 1954, p. 455.— 

 Newell, 1954, p. 333.— Uschakov, 1955, p. 126, fig. 20.— Costello, et al., 

 1957, p. 81.— Stickney, 1959, p. 16.— Clark, 1900, p. 10.— Eliason, 1962, p. 216. 



Lepidonotiis squamaius var. anguslus Verrill, 1881, p. 300. 



Lepidonotus caelorus Pettibone, 1953, p. 15, pis. 1, 2. 



Description. — Length up to 50 mm., width up to 15 mm. Color: 

 elytra exceedingly variable in coloration, mottled brownish or grayish, 

 or uniformly tan with amber-colored, reddish, or gi'eenish tubercles, 

 with or without a row of bilateral darker spots. 



Biology. — A slow moving polynoid that clings close to rough sur- 

 faces of stones, found under stones, hiding in cracks and crevices, in 

 the mterstices between mussels (as Mytilus), tunicates, barnacles, 

 cavities of sponges, holdfasts of algae (as Laminaria), among cal- 

 careous encrusting algae, hydroids (as Tubularia, Pennaria). Found 

 on piles and timbers of wharves, floats, bridges, buoj^s, etc. One of 

 the most abundant polychaetes in the oceanographic fouling studies 

 from the New England region. May be found in brackish waters 

 (Wesenberg-Lund, 1958). According to Newell (1954), it is some- 

 times found in lugworm burrows. It is dredged in great numbers on 

 variable mixtures of rocks, gravel, mud, with shells, bryozoan nodules, 

 tunicates (as sandy Amaroecium) , sand dollars, oysters, algae. It is 

 rarely found in mud. When disturbed, it rolls up like a piU bug, de- 

 pending on the tough dorsal scales for protection. It is tough and 

 sturdy, not fragmenting easily or losing its scales readily as do some 

 of the polynoids. 



In the Woods Hole region, Massachusetts, the breeding season ex- 

 tends from the last two weeks of April thi"ough May (Mead, 1897, 

 1898; Bumpus, 1898a-c). In the Boothbay Harbor region, Maine, 

 specimens were massed with sex products in June (June 24, 1955). 

 Males gave off clouds of white sperm in April (Sea Point, Maine, 

 April 3, 1954; Newcastle, New Hampshire, April 7, 1954). Males 

 whitish, viewed ventrally; females, when filled with eggs, dark greenish 

 drab. 



Material examined. — Numerous specimens from Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia to Long Island Sound, 

 intertidal to 134 fathoms. 



Distribution." — One of the most abundant and generally distrib- 

 uted polynoid species in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, but not 

 an Arctic form. Iceland, Faroes, Norway to France; Labrador, Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence to New Jersey (Virginia?) ; Alaska to Mexico, Japan. 

 In low water to 1,400 fathoms. 



