Sternaspis piotrowskiae sp. nov. (Polychaeta: Sternaspidae) 
from the Philippine Islands 
Sergio I. Salazar-Vallejo 
Depto. Sistemdtica y Ecologia Aciidtica, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur 
Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico 
E-mail: ssalazar@ecosur.mx, savs551216@hoti7iail.com 
A new species of Sternaspidae Cams, 1863, was collected during the 2011 Hears! 
Philippine Biodiversity Expedition, and it is being named after Christina 
Piotrowski, a member of the expedition and Collections Manager of Invertebrate 
Zoology. Sternaspis piotrowskiae sp. nov. has a reddish ventro-caudal shield, with 
anterior keels reaching anterior margins, fan truncate, margin barely crenulated or 
smooth, and posterior corners variably prominent. 
The polychaetes from the Philippine Islands have systematically been studied since the 1870s. 
The first major contribution was the monograph on the polychaete materials collected by Semper 
(Grube 1878) in shallow water bottoms; it contained 70 genera and almost 160 newly described 
species; most materials were deposited in the museums of Berlin (Hartwich 1993) or Wroclaw 
(Wiktor 1980). The Challenger Expedition collected at several stations in the archipelago; a total 
of 15 species of marine annelids were collected at four stations (201, 205, 209, 214), whereas 
before the Challenger, only two species had been reported from the archipelago (McIntosh 1885). 
In the early Twentieth Century, and as part of the reports about an American expedition to the 
Philippine Islands, Hoagland and Treadwell made a series of contributions; their illustrations are 
schematic and the type materials are in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. Hoagland (1920) 
reported 53 species and 22 out of them were new; Treadwell (1920, 1939a, 1939b, 1942, 1943) 
recorded 48 species and 10 were newly species and one genus was proposed. Holly (1934, 1935) 
made two contributions to the Philippine polychaete fauna by recording 25 species including the 
proposal for a new genus and descriptions for two new species; the latter of these two publications 
is remarkable because he was the first to use photographs, instead of line drawings, albeit it was 
restricted to one of his new species. 
Pillai (1965) repoiied 32 species in 30 genera from the Philippine Islands; two genera were 
newly proposed and 14 species and 3 varieties were newly described. His illustrations are high- 
qualityline drawings, and his collections were deposited in the now University of Sri Lanka, 
Colombo. The largest compilation about Philippine polychaetes was made by Natividad and Pal¬ 
pal-Latoc (1986). It contains synonymies, diagnosis, illustrations and distribution data for 49 
species in 30 genera and 15 families. They also provided keys to families, to genera and to species 
making it a useful reference, despite the fact they only included errant polychaetes. There are sev¬ 
eral other, mostly ecological publications made on Philippine polychaetes, and the only checklist 
was made by Palpal-latoc (2001). The only sternaspid polychaete heretofore recorded from the 
Philippine Islands was Petersenaspis palpallatoci (Sendall and Salazar-Vallejo, 2013). 
Methods 
Specimens were carefully cleaned and photographed. Illustrations were made by combining a 
series of photographs with HeliconFocus. The specimens are deposited in the Invertebrate Zoolo¬ 
gy and Geology Department, California Academy of Sciences (CAS). 
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