Ophelina cf. meyerae Wiklund, Neal, Glover, Drennan, Rabone & Dahlgren, 2019

Gunton, Laetitia M., Kupriyanova, Elena K., Alvestad, Tom, Avery, Lynda, Blake, James A., Biriukova, Olga, Boeggemann, Markus, Borisova, Polina, Budaeva, Nataliya, Burghardt, Ingo, Capa, Maria, Georgieva, Magdalena N., Glasby, Christopher J., Hsueh, Pan-Wen, Hutchings, Pat, Jimi, Naoto, Kongsrud, Jon A., Langeneck, Joachim, Meissner, Karin, Murray, Anna, Nikolic, Mark, Paxton, Hannelore, Ramos, Dino, Schulze, Anja, Sobczyk, Robert, Watson, Charlotte, Wiklund, Helena, Wilson, Robin S., Zhadan, Anna & Zhang, Jinghuai, 2021, Annelids of the eastern Australian abyss collected by the 2017 RV ' Investigator' voyage, ZooKeys 1020, pp. 1-198 : 1

Ophelina cf. meyerae Wiklund, Neal, Glover, Drennan, Rabone & Dahlgren, 2019

Diagnosis.

Bluntly conical prostomium with oval palpode. Eyes absent. 30 chaetigers. Midbody chaetigers longer than anterior and posterior chaetigers. Ventral and lateral grooves present along entire body. Wider space between parapodial rami on chaetigers 1-8. Chaetae all capillaries. Branchiae from chaetiger 2 to 29, largest posteriorly and smallest on midbody chaetigers. Anal funnel as long as last two posterior chaetigers, with thickened ventral keel and small terminal cirri. Colour in ethanol white.

Remarks.

Current specimens mostly conform to the description of Ophelina meyerae , the species was described from a single specimen from the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Central Pacific at 4300 m depth. These specimens have their largest branchiae on the posterior end of the body unlike O. meyerae . They were inferred as the sister group to the latter using the 16S marker, with K2P distances of 2.15-2.40% ( Ramos 2019).

Records.

138 specimens. Suppl. material 1: ops. 6, 9, 16, 31, 33, 45, 76, 79, 89, 96 (NHMUK).