A propos d'une espèce de paradoneis (polychète paraonidale) nouvelle pour la méditerranée occidentale

Among a small collection of Annelida Polychaeta collected in the Banyuls-sur-Mer area which I was sent to for identification by M. Amouroux (Arago Laboratory, 66-Banyuls-sur-Mer) were three specimens of a recently described species of Paraonidae from the Breton coast, Paradoneis armata Glémarec, 1967. Two years later, this species was found in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, on the Cretan coasts (Kalo-Limmiones) in the endofauna of a Halophila stipulacea prairie by Harmelin (1969), who described and figured the main distinctive characters of this Paraonidae (the reference to the original description is erroneous, Glémarec linking this specimen to the genus Paradoneis Hartman, 1965, and not to the genus Paraonides Cerruti sensu Hartman, 1965). The discovery of P. armata in Banyuls-sur-Mer demonstrates the probable continuity of this species' distribution area, from Crete to the coasts of Finistère. I had the opportunity to compare the three eastern Mediterranean specimens to some Breton ones, provided by M. Glemarec, and this comparison drove me to examine again a relative form, Cirrophorus branchiatus Ehlers, 1908, discovered in the Mediterranean Sea a few years ago (Laubier 1966).