Polychaeta of the Socotra Archipelago

In spring 2000 Thomas Wehe participated in the UNDP/GEF funded project „Conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity of Socotra Archipelago“, the marine part of which is led by Senckenberg. He collected ca. 650 polychaetes comprising 19 families with about 40 scale worms among them. These were studied by him in the scope of his PhD thesis. 

Altogether specimens from more than 20 different localities were collected, including the smaller, less accessible islands of the archipelago. This material has only been partly analysed, but within the family Sabellariidae a new record for a genus could be verified for the Arabian region.

Additional taxa are analysed by Danny Eibye-Jacobsen, Copenhagen (Spionidae), Charlotte Watson, Darwin (Chrysopetalidae) and Markus Böggemann, Osnabrück (Goniadidae). A new species of Namanereididae found in a brackish waterhole 700m above sealevel was described by Dieter Fiege and Kay Van Damme (Brussels). With work progressing another new species of Namanereis was described. A faunal census of the Syllidae form Socotra has meanwhile been completed in cooperation with Guillermo San Martín and Yolanda Lucas-Rodriguez (both Madrid). 

Additional new records and species are expected as work proceeds. Socotra Archipelago is especially interesting wirh respect to its polychaete fauna because it has never been studied before.