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Identification and Distribution of a Bone-eating Marine Worm (Annelida, Osedax)
Abstract
Ephemeral reducing environments such as hydrothermal vents and whale falls
create oases of chemosynthetic primary production in the nutrient poor deep sea. The
polychaete family Siboglinidae has adapted to occupy these niches of chemical nutrition.
This likely requires high levels of dispersal, either through long-living larvae or a
“stepping-stone” dispersal method. Here we seek to identify recently found specimens of
Osedax from whalebones off the coast of Oregon and Antarctica. Once species identity
was determined, we sought to elucidate connectivity between known populations of
Osedax from Monterey Bay and Sagami Bay. To accomplish this, we sequenced the
mitochondrial marker COI and inferred relationships through a haplotype network and
maximum likelihood tree.