October, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No.6 
throughout its pages. John maintains that this 
work, although nearly 140 years old, remains 
one of the best and most thorough 
examinations of a fauna in this group. 
He also passed around an interesting series of 
publications by Ernest Libby entitled “Internal 
Structure of Sea Shells”, which contained x-ray 
photos of many of the more popular and 
beautiful shells in three folios. If you’ve never 
seen the results of an x-ray photo of a shell, 
you should see this publication. Internal 
structures are characteristic for various groups, 
and emphasize the geometric nature of 
gastropod coiling. 
Hydroids were the animals to start the day. 
The first problem animals were small 
individuals in the family Corymorphidae from 
station 2229 in San Diego Bay at a depth of 
11.5 m. The animals threw us all for a loop as 
they had capitate/moniliform oral tentacles but 
long, thin villiform aboral tentacles. No 
evidence of hydromedusae or budding of any 
kind was evident and neither were growth 
buds. It was decided to call the animal 
Corymorphidae sp SD 1 for the time being. As 
it turns out Dean Pasko also had a specimen of 
this same animal that he’d brought to the 
meeting. It was from station 2227, also in San 
Diego Bay, at a depth of 8.8 m. 
John Ljubenkov then brought forth a new 
hydroid, Euphysa sp C, that he’d found in 
samples from Willapa Bay Washington and 
Newport, Oregon (Yaquina Bay). Normally, in 
this area, one sees Euphysa ruthii. Euphysa sp 
C differs from E. ruthii in a number of ways. 
For one the stem in sp C is not nearly as long 
as that found on ruthii. Secondly, from what 
he’s seen at this point, E. sp C seems to have 
numerous individuals sharing a common 
perisarc, while E. ruthii is solitary. He needs to 
see more of these animals to further clarify the 
characters which separate them from E. ruthii. 
Both species seem to reproduce asexually with 
frustules, ball like bodies which form at the 
base of the polyp in E. sp C, and at the base of 
the stem in E. ruthii. These develop into buds 
which form new polyps. 
Next up was a rather bizarre situation. A 
polychaete, Poecilochaetus johnsoni had small 
hydroids attached to its body wall between 
consecutive parapods. The hydroids were 
discovered anterior to setiger 14, where the 
gills for this worm would start, so they were 
not being confused with such structures. The 
hydroids were so tiny as to discourage any 
attempt at definitive ID. The question 
remained as to whether these animals were 
actually parasitizing the polychaete or were 
acting as commensals and just “going along for 
the ride”. For those of you interested in 
parasite/host or commensal/host interactions, 
this would be an interesting one to study. 
John Ljubenkov then showed an in situ slide of 
the anemone Bunodeopsis. The animal is 
quite distinctive and shouldn’t be difficult to 
recognize. There are no tentacles on the oral 
face itself which is almost volcano-like with 
the mouth being the “rim”. The tentacles are 
typically curled and covered with white spots 
which upon closer examination are 
nematocysts. These animals are found in bays 
and estuaries living on or near eel grass beds. 
They like long, stringy substrate upon which to 
attach themselves and could also be found on 
frayed lines, etc. The stings from their 
nematocysts are not powerful enough to cause 
great agony, but if one stays in the water with 
them long enough a numbness around the face 
or potentially other exposed areas can be 
experienced. 
Anthozoa sp Hypl brought by Tony Phillips 
(Hyperion) was the next mystery beast. The 
specimens were found in 66 m of water at 
Santa Cruz Island. After some examination it 
was suggested that they could possibly be 
Zaolutus actius. They had the characteristic 
grey/purple pigment spot in the tentacles and 
the columns were appropriately wrinkled, and 
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