Parahesione Pettibone, 1956

Parahesione Pettibone, 1956 View in CoL

Diagnosis (modified after Jimi et al. 2023). Body depressed, reddish yellow to bright and deep red when alive. Prostomium with two lateral antennae, without median antenna, with two pairs of eyes. Palps simple or biarticulate. Six or eight pairs of tentacular cirri. Dorsal cirrophores fused with dorsal foliose lobe extending to base of parapodia, or dorsal foliose lobe absent. Parapodia typically biramous, sometimes uniramous in chaetiger 1. Notopodia with numerous capillary chaetae. Neuropodia with numerous compound chaetae: homogomph and/or heterogomph falcigers and heterogomph spinigers.

Remarks. The diagnosis of Parahesione in Jimi et al. (2023) was slightly emended, the most important modifications being:

1) The colour of the living worms, originally stated as “reddish”, is in fact ranging from “reddish yellow to bright and deep red”, encompassing the pale reddish yellow colour of P. luteola ( Pettibone 1963: 108) and the bright to deep blood-red colour of the three Indo-West Pacific species ( Jimi et al. 2023; present study).

2) The original statement “Dorsal cirrophores fused with or without dorsal foliose lobe extending to base of parapodia” is somewhat confusing and was replaced by “Dorsal cirrophores fused with dorsal foliose lobe extending to base of parapodia, or dorsal foliose lobe absent”.

3) The original statement “parapodia biramous” agrees with the type species and the undescribed species from New Caledonia, in which all parapodia are indeed biramous ( Ruta et al. 2007); however, P. pulvinata and P. apiculata , as well as the below described new species, have uniramous parapodia in the first chaetiger.