July, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 3 
to bridge the distance sizeable. Benefits can 
also be great, and our visitors from the north 
(Cassandra Roberts and Alex Cully) were 
enthusiastic about the experience. The prize for 
greatest distance traveled went, however, to 
Lianna Jarecki, a college marine biology 
teacher from Tortola in the British Virgin 
Islands. She was visiting the Natural History 
Museum for her thesis research and found a 
berth on the cruise. 
12 JULY MEETING 
The meeting was held in the Worm Lab at the 
Los Angeles County Museum of Natural 
History. President Ron Velarde opened the 
business aspect of the meeting by announcing 
the dates of the August meetings. There will 
again be two meetings. The non-polychaete 
meeting will be held August 16 th , and the 
polychaete meeting will be held August 30 th . 
The location for both meetings is the Marine 
Biology Laboratory in San Diego. Vice- 
President Leslie Harris said she welcomes 
ideas for future meeting topics and guest 
speakers. So if you have any ideas, please pass 
them along. 
Leslie Harris then passed around three books 
that she has recently acquired: 
1) Hawai’i’s Sea Creatures: A guide to 
Hawaii’s marine invertebrates, by John P. 
Hoover, 1998. 
2) The Fossils of the Burgess Shale, by Derek 
E.G. Briggs, Douglas H. Erwin, Frederick J. 
Collier, 1994. 
3) Southeast Alaska’s Rocky Shores Animals, 
by Rita M. O’Clair and Charles E. O’Clair, 
1998. 
Larry Lovell then passed around a reprint he 
just received from Elena Kupriyanova, 1999, 
The taxonomic status of Serpula cf. 
columbiana Johnson, 1901 from the American 
and Asian coasts of the North Pacific Ocean. 
Ophelia 50(l):21-34. 
It was mentioned by Leslie Harris there is a 
new cartoon premiering on the Nickelodeon 
channel titled “Sponge Bob,” featuring Sponge 
Bob himself and other invertebrate characters. 
Leslie also drew our attention to a request 
appearing on the SCAMIT website. It is an e- 
mail from Dr. Sepalika Jayamanne in Sri 
Lanka. He is working on benthic invertebrates 
in estuaries there, and they do not have 
taxonomic keys. Dr. Jayamanne is also looking 
for a place to perform studies. If anyone can 
offer some assistance, you can e-mail him at 
nara@itmin.com. 
We then dove into problematic polychaetes 
from the Bight’98 samples. The first family 
discussed was spionids. Leslie Harris gave us 
a review of dorsal organs and transverse 
intersegmental ciliated bands, continuing the 
discussion from last month’s polychaete 
meeting. Leslie had examined the holotype 
and paratype specimens of Spio maculata. The 
shape of the dorsal organs and the methyl green 
staining pattern matched those of Leslie’s S. 
maculata ( -S . sp B) that she illustrated in her 
Taxonomic Discussion List posting of June 2. 
The dorsal organs were circular in shape, and 
there were two per segment. The prostomium 
stained dark and solid, both dorsally and 
ventrally. In addition, methyl green staining 
revealed ventral transverse, rectangular 
patches. At the meeting, we examined 
specimens of Spio maculata from San Diego. 
In contrast to the holotype and Leslie’s 
specimens from Long Beach, the dorsal organs 
were straight, extending horizontally between 
intersegmental lines. There was faint brown 
pigmentation on the lateral and ventral surfaces 
of the peristomium. The methyl green staining 
pattern of the San Diego specimens were 
similar to that of the holotype with some subtle 
differences. The stain on the prostomium and 
peristomium was not as solid as in the holotype 
but was more accurately described as dense 
stippling. There were transverse patches on 
the ventrum and also some faint ones on the 
dorsum. The outlines of the branchiae stained 
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