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Project Noah Nature School
This is my 1000th spotting! Yay! --------------------------------------------------------------------------I've been trying to figure out what exactly this is for years. I've taken it to my bio teacher and he couldn't ID it so he showed it to other bio majors and they couldn't figure it out either. So I'm thinking maybe it could be a new species? There are lots of them in the intertidal in Avalon bay year round. They seem to be some sort of keel worm (Pomatoceros), but all the pictures I see of them are white. None of them are purple like these. They all vary in length but are usually a few inches long.
Tidepools in Avalon Bay. On and under rocks in the intertidal zone.
The only other keelworm I see is Pomatoceros triqueter, but they're all white. According to Wikipedia: "This species is found in the Arctic, eastern North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Black and Red Sea, the English Channel, the North Sea, Skagerrak, Kattegat the Little and Great Belts and Øresund north east to the Bay of Kiel." None of them say Catalina Island or west coast pacific. So have I found myself a new species? Or is it a subspecies of Pomatoceros triqueter that somehow got introduced to Catalina and turned purple?
Spotted on Dec 10, 2011
Submitted on May 3, 2015
6 Comments
Had exactly the same experience and could not find the pink version. Check out http://australianmuseum.net.au/journal/p.... A lot of reading, no colour drawings and quite frankly there are various options for our specimens. But at least, it is clear that Pomatocerus has been renamed into Spirobranchus.
Oops, sorry, i fixed it!
Nice find Kiloueka,in the common name window you cant put the 1000th reference,ok? you can put it in the comments,btw congrats on the milestone and thanks for sharing such a interesting spotting page
Just added some more info: "The only other keelworm I see is Pomatoceros triqueter, but they're all white. According to Wikipedia: "This species is found in the Arctic, eastern North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Black and Red Sea, the English Channel, the North Sea, Skagerrak, Kattegat the Little and Great Belts and Øresund north east to the Bay of Kiel." None of them say Catalina Island or west coast pacific. So have I found myself a new species? Or is it a subspecies of Pomatoceros triqueter that somehow got introduced to Catalina and turned purple?"
Thanks! And I still have a ton to go!
Congrats on spotting #1000!