Polychaetes: An Interactive Identification Guide

We are pleased to announce the publication of Polychaetes: An Interactive Identification Guide, a CD and booklet by Robin Wilson, Pat Hutchings and Chris Glasby (editors), published today by CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne. A number of colleagues on the annelida list have contributed their expertise to the interactive keys for their relevant families. Further information and ordering

The polychaete fauna of Australia numbers some 67 families, 420 genera and 1139 species. Worldwide there are 82 families, over 1000 named genera and over 13 000 named species. Polychaetes, along with peracarid crustaceans, almost invariably dominate marine and estuarine benthic environments.

Identification of polychaetes requires access to a vast literature, comprising many hundreds of papers in several languages in numerous scientific journals. Globally, the literature dates from the 1700s and many thousands of papers are relevant for the identification of the polychaete fauna of a particular region. Few of these publications represent comprehensive reviews that can be used alone as a guide to a significant part of the fauna. Even with access to this eclectic literature, many polychaetes are found to be undescribed or widely confused with similar species found in other seas (especially in Australia and elsewhere in the southern hemisphere)."

We hope that Polychaetes: An Interactive Identification Guide will alleviate some of these problems and make polychaete identification a more tractable problem.

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