September-December, 2012 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 31 Nos. 3-4 
appears to be mostly seen north of Pt. Coneeption although Maluf (1988) has the range listed as 
Alaska to Cortez Bank. [M. Lilly update June 24, 2016: Since this NL is being written years late, 
the B'13 project has come and gone during which there was 1 individual of O. sarsi collected]. 
Next we went on to diseuss taxonomie eonvention for the treatment of juvenile ophiuroids. For 
instanee, with juvenile individuals in the family Amphiuridae, Megan does not set a striet size 
limit, but rather prefers to look at the development of the oral papillae to aseertain an ID. A 
juvenile animal with a well-developed pair of infradental papillae but with no other oral papillae 
present is left at the family level ID of Amphiuridae. 
Some speeies ean be identified down to extremely small sizes regardless of oral papillae 
development, or laek thereof Megan diseussed two examples of this - Ophiuroconis bispinosa 
and Amphichondrius granulatus. O. bispinosa has a distinetive looking jaw that even at small 
sizes is reeognizable and granules will be present on the oral frame and dise eap on small 
juveniles. As for^. granulatus, again even at small sizes, the elongate 3"^^^ oral papillae ean be 
seen and the “minute angular granules” will be present on the oral aspeet of the dise eap. 
Next on the agenda was to review the protoeols for dealing with eehinoids, speeifieally, Brisaster 
and how to separate the two speeies - townsendi and latifrons. Please visit the Taxonomie Tool 
seetion on the SCAMIT website for doeumentation of the protoeols. Additionally see SCAMIT 
NT’s Vol 23 no 5 and Vol 26 no 2 for a more detailed diseussion of this subjeet. 
At deeper stations (200m+) large trawls of Brisaster have oeeurred. In the event of sueh a 
trawl it was reeommended that a subset of 30 animals be brought baek to the lab for ID and the 
subsequently determined ratio of speeies be applied to the estimated total eateh. 
Megan then reviewed the distribution data of Brisaster townsendi and B. latifrons from the B’08 
projeet. During the projeet, the majority of B. townsendi sampled in the southern region of the 
Bight were from 400m or deeper. As the stations moved north they were sampled usually between 
200-300m. As for B. latifrons, they were sampled primarily between 100-200m. She said she’d be 
eurious to see if the pattern “held” during the B’13 projeet. 
Staying on the subjeet of Spatangoids, Megan next diseussed the unusual and rare Brissopsis 
sp LAI, first found during the B’03 projeet. This animal, to date, has only been found at depths 
below 300m, and CSD has only seen it below 400m. See SCAMIT NL Vol 26 no 2 and the 
Taxonomie Tool seetion of the SCAMIT website for further diseussion of this speeies. Whether 
or not it is a hybrid between Brissopsis and Brisaster (making it a hybrid between 2 different 
Families), an eeophenotype of Brissopsis pacifica, or an as of yet undeseribed speeies of 
Brissopsis, still remains to be determined. 
A general slide showing a few speeies of heart urehins of the CSD monitoring program was then 
reviewed. It eontained images of Lovenia cordiformis, Nacospatangus laevis, and a growth series 
of Spatangus californicus. At juvenile sizes, these speeies ean be difheult to separate. However, 
habitat/depth ean be used as an indieator of whieh speeies you may be dealing with, i.e., S. 
californicus is usually found at 60+m, whereas L. cordiformis and N. laevis are found in 30m 
or shallower. Additionally presenee/absenee of an anterior ambulaeral noteh and faseioles are 
eharaeters to assist in identifieation. 
Sand dollars were reviewed and fairly straight forward, but everyone was reminded that two 
speeies of Dendraster exist in the SCB - D. excentricus and D. terminalis. D. excentricus is 
10 
Publication Date: 6 July 2016 
