Pogonophora

Southward, Eve C., Schulze, Anja & Tunnicliffe, Verena, 2002, Vestimentiferans (Pogonophora) in the Paci c and Indian Oceans: a new genus from Lihir Island (Papua New Guinea) and the Java Trench, with the rst report of Arcovestia ivanovi from the North Fiji Basin, Journal of Natural History 36 (10), pp. 1179-1197 : 1182

Class Pogonophora, subclasses Vestimentifera and Perviata

In this paper Vestimentifera (5 Obturata) and Perviata (sensu Jones 1981) are regarded as subclasses of the class Pogonophora in order to maintain consistency with recent papers describing new vestimentiferan species ( Southward, 1991; Southward and Galkin, 1997; Southward et al., 1995). There has been considerable diOEerence of opinion about the relationship of these tubicolous worms to various invertebrate phyla and their taxonomic rank. Recently, some authors using molecular data and others using morphological characters have placed pogonophorans and vestimentiferans close to or within the Annelida or the Polychaeta ( Kojima et al., 1993; Rouse and Fauchald, 1995; McHugh, 1997; Bartolomaeus, 1998; Westheide et al., 1999). The developmental stages of perviates and vestimentiferans are very similar in ciliation, segmentation and chaetation and an annelidan relationship is indicated ( Southward, 1988, 1999). The use of cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 sequence data led Black et al. (1997) to surmise that annelids may be basal to perviates and perviates basal to vestimentiferans and this is largely supported by additional molecular data ( Halanych et al., 1998). Rouse and Fauchald (1997) suggest inclusion of both Perviata and Vestimentifera in a single polychaete family Siboglinidae . This view requires a revision of pogonophoran taxonomy. Since this has not been accomplished we take a conservative approach to the taxonomy.