Dendronasus sp.—a New Member of the Order Nose-Walkers (Rhinogradentia)

Abstract

In 1987, a small group of students that included me had a summer field course in marine zoology on Putyatin Island, situated not far from Vladivostok. We spent most of the time performing vital observations and dissecting and drawing various specimens of the local marine fauna, some of which were then fixed in formalin for future examination. After returning to Saint Petersburg (Leningrad at that time), busy with some urgent affairs, I postponed the examination of the fixed samples. Recently, while arranging things in the lab, I chanced upon the glass with the samples and looked into them. Among the sea worms, mollusks, and ascidians, all well-known and thus of no special interest to me, I found a piece of rotten wood to which a colony of animals unknown to me was attached. The colony comprised only three zooids and two buds. Two zooids were severely damaged and partially destroyed, all because I, an inexperienced student at the time of the collection of the samples, had packed the samples too tightly, and some soft parts were in close contact with hard ones (mollusk shells etc.). The third zooid, however, remained almost intact. To my great surprise and excitement, a careful examination resulted in its identification as a member of a very peculiar group of the order Nose-walkers (Rhinogradentia), discovered by G. Stumpke, a German zoologist. His first communications on the subject were published as far back as the