Proceedings of 
the United States 
National Museum 
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION + WASHINGTON, D.C. 
Volume 120 1967 Number 3565 
THE BENTHIC POLYCHAETA AND AMPHIPODA 
OF MORRO BAY, CALIFORNIA 
By Donatp J. RetsH anp J. Laurens Barnarp! 
This paper records the present fauna of polychaete worms and 
amphipod crustaceans of Morro Bay, California, and reports upon 
their zoogeographic relationships to areas previously studied by the 
authors. Prior work in Morro Bay includes a study of the distribu- 
tion of the wood-boring isopod Limnoria and the Nebaliacea (Menzies 
and Mohr, 1952) and amphipods (Barnard, 1952). 
Although altered by dredging, the installation of wharfs, and the 
establishment of oyster farming, the environment of Morro Bay is of 
interest because of the sparsity of other embayments on the long 
coastline of central California. Previous studies on the benthic 
invertebrates of Californian bays and harbors include the following: 
Tomales Bay (Pitelka and Paulson, 1962), San Francisco Bay 
(Packard, 1918; Hartman, 1954a; Filice, 1954, 1958, 1959; Jones, 
1961), Elkhorn Slough (MacGinitie, 1935), Los Angeles—Long 
Beach Harbors (Reish, 1959b), Alamitos Bay (Reish and Winter, 
1954; Reish, 1961, 1963a), Newport Bay (Barnard and Reish, 1959), 
San Diego Bay (Anon., 1952), and Catalina Harbor, Santa Catalina 
1Reish: Department of Biology, California State College, Long Beach, 
California; Barnard: Associate Curator, Division of Crustacea, Smithsonian 
Institution. Barnard’s work completed at Beaudette Foundation, Moss Land- 
ing, California. 
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