Morphological Description and Weight-Length Relationship of the Intertidal Sipuncula Siphonosoma australe (Keferstein, 1865) along the Central Coast of Vietnam
Morphological Description and Weight-Length Relationship of the Intertidal Sipuncula Siphonosoma australe (Keferstein, 1865) along the Central Coast of Vietnam
Phuong-Thao Ho1, 2, Thi Tuong Vy Nguyen3, Ngoc Hai Tran3 and Tran Van Giang4*
ABSTRACT
The sipuncula is an important ecological and economical resource to the inter-tidal ecosystem and humans due to its environmental functions and nutritional as well as medicinal values. Thus, the current study intends to determine systematic validity and to assess the weight–length relationship of the sipuncula living along the central coast of Vietnam. Species identity is evidenced by the key features of external morphology and internal anatomy. The results show that all these sipuncula have striking similarities to the sipuncula Siphonosoma australes (Keferstein, 1865), which has greater than 100 fibrous tentacles around their mouth and 15-17 longitudinal bands running along the body wall. Besides, we detected significant differences body mass, body length, introvert length, BM/BL and IL/BL ratios but not trunk length and diameter, number of tentacles, and longitudinal muscular bands of those thriving at different habitats. Additionally, we examined the growth pattern for the Vietnamese sipuncula using a least-squares regression model computed for weight–length relationships. The BM – BL relationship exhibited a significantly linear regression and a negative allometric growth pattern, indicating faster length increment compared to weight. The present study has contributed important information for assessing the status and density of the S. australe population from the central coast of Vietnam locally and the Indo–West Pacific region generally.
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