May, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 1 
the animals and give a recommendation as to 
how to treat what we’ve been calling A. 
hexacanthus, that name will continue to be 
used for the sake of data consistency, not just 
within the City of San Diego’s lab but for 
interagency calibration as well. 
Some of our continuing problems with these 
animals can be laid at the feet of H. L. Clark, 
whose original description of the animal was 
based on disk-less specimens. He as much as 
stated in his description that his material was 
insufficient to define the species, but then went 
ahead and gave a new species name to his disk¬ 
less specimens. When Hendler reexamined 
them he found himself unable to separate them 
from specimens of Dougaloplus amphacantha. 
Perhaps with the material collected and 
submitted by CSDMWWD he will locate 
additional characters which will allow Clark’s 
species to be resurrected, even with such 
imperfect type material. If not, action should be 
taken to remove Amphioplus hexacanthus from 
the synonymy of D. amphacantha , and declare 
it a nomen inquirendum, since the type 
material is not sufficient to determine the 
species accurately. Dr. Hendler may undertake 
such an action if he is convinced that there is a 
second species in the area with identical arm 
and oral field morphology, but with different 
disk morphology. As part of the discussion on 
this issue we came to the realization that we 
didn’t know with certainty what genus should 
receive the species currently being referred to 
as “A. hexacanthus , \ We will await guidance 
from Dr. Hendler following his examination of 
the material. 
During the taxonomic list server exchanges 
which preceded this meeting it was suggested 
that there might be a problem with separation 
of Amphioplus “hexacanthus ” from 
Amphioplus sp A. The latter species was 
synonymized with Amphiura diomedeae 
implicitly by Hendler (1996, pg. 147), as he 
listed among the material of A. diomedeae 
examined the primary voucher of Amphioplus 
sp A from Phase I of the MMS Santa Maria 
Basin study, the same specimen used to 
establish the provisional name [in effect the 
“type” of Amphioplus sp A]. 
The rest of the day was spent discussing and 
comparing some sipunculids ( Nephasoma 
eremita taken by CSDLAC and CSDMWWD 
and Golfingia margaritacea taken by 
CSDMWWD), a flatworm from San Diego 
Bay (a Eurylepta species, but too small for firm 
species level recognition), and one from 
offshore Seal Beach (Polycladida sp. 27 of 
MEC), and urochordates. Some of the 
urochordates were species encountered among 
the Voucher QC lots examined by Megan Lilly 
from the B’98 trawls, while several others were 
from the B’98 benthic sampling. The most 
interesting was a large animal with the 
branchial structure of Ascidia combined with 
the thick opaque rugose tunic typical of a 
Styela. 
BIBLIOGRPAHY 
Banse, Karl. 1972. Redescription of some species of Chone Kroyer and Euchone Malmgren, and 
three new species (Sabellidae, Polychaeta). Fishery Bulletin 70(2):459-495. 
Beladjal, Lynda & Johan Mertens. 1999. Direct preservation in alcohol causes deformation of 
taxonomic key-characters in Anostraca (Crustacea). International Review of 
Hydrobiology 84(1): 17-22. 
Coan, Eugene V. 1999. The eastern Pacific Sportellidae (Bivalvia). Veliger 42(2): 132-151. 
Davis, Gary E., Peter L. Haaker, & Daniel V. Richards. 1998. The perilous condition of white 
abalone Haliotis sorenseni, Bartsch, 1940. Journal of Shellfish Research 17(3):871-875. 
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