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Shell-boring versus tube-dwelling: is the mode of life fixed or flexible? Two cases in spionid polychaetes (Annelida, Spionidae)

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Abstract

Free crawling was an original life style, and the ability to build tubes and bore into shells evolved independently in various annelids and more than once within the family Spionidae. Absence of morphological differences between the shell-boring (SB) and tube-dwelling (TD) spionid worms and the innate ability of borers to build tubes raised a question whether the mode of life is fixed or flexible. Sequence data of three gene fragments of the mitochondrial 16S rDNA and nuclear 18S and 28S rDNA (in total 1,677 bp) have shown that SB and TD individuals of Dipolydora carunculata from the Sea of Japan were genetically identical, whereas those of Polydora triglanda from Taiwan were genetically distant and not conspecific. These data indicate that some species are constrained to a certain mode of life, while others are flexible and individuals can be either SB or TD depending on the place of settlement in the end of their larval development.

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Acknowledgments

Our sincere thanks are to Dr. Hwey-Lian Hsieh for providing generous support and conditions for collecting polychaetes in Taiwan, to Dr. John W. Chapman and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and edits on the manuscript, and to Alexander A. Omelyanenko for photographing scallop perforated by polychaetes. Financial support was provided by the National Science Council of Taiwan (NSC 94-2621-B-001-014) and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Project 05-04-90589) through the Taiwan–Russian Joint Research Cooperative Programme (Joint Research Project 94WIA0100036; Contract RP05B11), the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Project 12-04-00609) through the A.V. Zhirmunsky Institute of Marine Biology, and the Government of the Russian Federation (Project 11.G34.31.0010) through the Far Eastern Federal University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. A.V. Zhirmunsky Institute of Marine Biology, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 17 Palchevsky Street, 690059, Vladivostok, Russia

    Vasily I. Radashevsky & Victoria V. Pankova

  2. Far Eastern Federal University, 8 Sukhanov Street, 690091, Vladivostok, Russia

    Vasily I. Radashevsky

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  1. Vasily I. Radashevsky
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  2. Victoria V. Pankova
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Correspondence to Vasily I. Radashevsky.

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Communicated by S. Uthicke.

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Radashevsky, V.I., Pankova, V.V. Shell-boring versus tube-dwelling: is the mode of life fixed or flexible? Two cases in spionid polychaetes (Annelida, Spionidae). Mar Biol 160, 1619–1624 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-013-2214-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-013-2214-8

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