Occurrence of Chloeia flava pulchella Baird, 1868, from Off Junglighat, South Andaman, India

Abstract

Fire-worms from the family Amphinomidae Lamark, 1818, act as a predator, scavenger and sedimentivores, in nearshore waters. This family has 146 valid species among them 18 numbers reported from Indian marine environment and 11 reported from the Andaman waters. Among this family, genus Choleia Lamark. 1818, reported 4 species and 1 subspecies from the Andaman waters. Among these the species Chloeia flava pulchella Baird, 1868 was reported by Tampi and Rangarajan, 1964, but no detailed species description was found for this species. During the studies on continuous monitoring of the environmental parameter of nearshore waters of off South Andaman region, a specimen of Chloeia flava pulchella Baird, 1868, was collected. Later the cursory analysis for this specimen identification was revealed that the detailed description of this species found in this region was not available in the literature. So, the detailed taxonomic description was developed and presented in this article.