Decathelepus Hutchings, 1977

Nogueira, João Miguel De Matos & Hutchings, Pat A., 2007, New species of terebellid polychaetes (Polychaeta: Terebellidae) from Australia, Zootaxa 1473, pp. 1-24 : 12

Decathelepus Hutchings, 1977 emended

Type species: Decathelepus ocellatus Hutchings, 1977 , by monotypy.

Diagnosis. Prostomium at base of upper lip, basal part relatively large, distal part forming thick transverse shelf-like process of uniform width, sometimes expanded to form tongue-like longitudinal process, extending along dorsal side of upper lip. Upper lip narrow and elongate, lower lip expanded. Anterior segments forming raised crests dorsally and laterally. Segment 1 ending laterally to lower lip. Segment 2 ventrally oblique around and below lower lip. From segment 3, segments highly glandular. Two pairs of branchiae on segments 2–3, each pair with simple filaments, progressively tapering to tips. Notopodia beginning from segment 3 and extending for 15 segments, with distally limbate notochaetae on both tiers, those on anterior tier shorter. Neuropodia beginning from segment 12, present as low ridges throughout. Uncini higher than long, with short triangular heel, developed prow and dorsal button closer to tip of prow than base of main fang.

Remarks. The diagnosis of the genus is here emended to allow for the absence of the tongue-like prostomial process originating from the distal part of prostomium, which also occurs in Glossothelepus Hutchings and Glasby, 1986 and Rhinothelepus Hutchings, 1974 . Although it seems unlikely that such a structure has appeared independently in these genera, at this point, as said before, the boundaries for the variation allowed within each genus are beyond the scope of the present paper and therefore we are relying upon the number of pairs of notopodia present and on the segments on which notopodia and neuropodia first appear in order to characterize our new species as Decathelepus .