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The Terebellidae is a marine family of
polychaete worms Polychaeta () is a paraphyletic class of generally marine annelid worms, commonly called bristle worms or polychaetes (). Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are ma ...
, of which the type taxon is '' Terebella'', described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1767 12th edition of ''Systema Naturae''.


Characteristics

Most terebellids live in burrows or crevices and are often of large size, ranging up to 150 millimetres in length and 15 millimetres in width. The numerous, very long tentacles which radiate from near the mouth are used for finding and collecting food particles from the sediment surface. The tentacles are not retractable as is the case in the ampharetids. They have plump anterior bodies and numerous segments in their long, tapered posterior bodies, whereas ampharetids are more compact. They have branched gills laterally on up to three anterior chaetigers but in the subfamily Thelepodinae the gills are numerous simple filaments. The mid-body chaetigers are in double rows in the subfamily Terebellinae. In the subfamily Polycirrinae, the gills are absent and the prostomium is expanded as an undulating membrane which bears the tentacles.,


Systematics

The roughly 400 known
species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...
are divided between many dozens of
genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomencl ...
. Most of these are assigned to 4
subfamilies In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoologi ...
.World Register of Marine Species
/ref> Some additional genera are of unresolved or quite basal position.


Gallery

Image:Nerr0329.jpg, ''
Amphitrite In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite (; grc-gre, Ἀμφιτρίτη, Amphitrítē) was the goddess of the sea, the queen of the sea, and the wife of Poseidon. She was a daughter of Nereus and Doris (or Oceanus and Tethys).Roman, L., & Rom ...
'' sp. Image:Eupolymnia nebulosa & Crambe crambe.jpg, '' Eupolymnia nebulosa'' Image:Lanice conchilega.jpg, '' Lanice conchilega'' Image:Terebellidae sp..jpg, '' Loima'' sp. Image:Thelepuscincinnatus.jpg, '' Thelepus cincinnatus''


References


Three new species of Thelepus Leuckart, 1849 from Europe and a re-description of T. cincinnatus (Fabricius, 1780)


External links

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3608334 Terebellida