Research Training Program

Polychaeta are closely related to the well known earthworms. However, in contrast to the earthworms, they have a great diversity of body forms, color, size (range from millimeters to a few meters) and habitats. Most of them are marine animals and very few live in fresh water. They usually live in tubes or burrows in the sand or in the rocks. This project had two objectives. The first was to find groups in the genus Eunice that can be used to organize members of this large genus in distinct groups because the genus Eunice today should not be considered a genus because many of the characters that define the species evolved several times. The second objective was to determine if two recently described genera can be considered different from the others of the family (family is an ensemble of genera that have some characters in common). In order to obtain these results cladistic analysis was used. This analysis is used to find the phylogenetic pattern of the organisms, not in an evolutionary line but in an evolutionary tree. This tree resembles the family trees usually used to organize the generations of the families. Eunice ended up separated into three groups. Two of them may be used to divide this genus, but the third one may not turn out to be valid in future analysis. Only a few species were examined in this study, more need to be examined to confirm the pattern found. The results of the analysis performed with the two recently described genera were dubious. Many characters of these two genera were missing in the cladistic analysis and this decreases reliability of the results.

This research was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Women's Committee.

Letter of Gratitude