Guana Island Marine Invertebrates

 

Why aren't you going to other nearby islands?

This giant sipunculan worm, the only one found in four years, was collected during the final days of the field study by REU students at one of the most heavily sampled sites.

 

On the final day of collecting in 2000, a handful of algae (one of many taken from that small patch reef over two seasons) yielded three species of leptostracan crustaceans (a group of animals that have been called "living fossils"). Of these three species, one was known to science but had not been reported from the area, one was a new undescribed speceis, and the last was not only a new species, but it was so different from other leptostacans that a new genus had to be created for it.

 

Several of these large, showy crabs (Eriphia gonogra) were found under rocks in the intertidal during our preliminary investigation of the island in 1998. The island's shallow water fauna changes somewhat from year to year so we constantly add to our list of animals by searching the same locations year after year, but at the same time animals like this may only be seen once.

 

 

This small laomid shrimp was also found in 1998 (under a rock nearby to the Eriphia gonagra). It also has not been collected since. This is frustrating because it has proven to be an undescribed species and a male is needed to adequately describe and name the species.