PROC. BIOL. SOC. WASH. 94(3), 1981, pp. 761-770 AUSTRALONUPHIS VIOLACEA, A NEW POLYCHAETE (ONUPHIDAE) FROM THE SOUTHEAST PACIFIC OCEAN N. Rozbaczylo and J. C. Castilla Abstract. — A new species of Australonuphis Paxton, 1979, A. violacea from the southeast Pacific Ocean off Chile is described. This constitutes the second record of the genus Australonuphis along the west coast of America and the first for the southeast Pacific. The new species most closely resem-bles A. casamiquelorum (Orensanz, 1974) from the southwest Atlantic Ocean. During 1971-1978 while working in a long term sandy macrofauna sam-pling (J. C. Castilla, principal investigator) several specimens of a big onu-phid polychaete were collected in the sandy beach of Los Molles (32°15'S, 7r33'W). These specimens and others collected recently by 2 of our stu-dents (C. Luxoro and L. Sierralta) in another sandy beach of central Chile, Playa de Cachagua (32°35'S, 71°28'W), belong to a new species, described herein. The species is a member of the genus Australonuphis Paxton, which is recorded for the first time in the Chilean fauna. As a result of the present study, the number of onuphids known from the coast of Chile is now 14 species in 6 genera (Rozbaczylo, in preparation). The generic name Australonuphis was recently proposed by Paxton (1979) as a substitute for Americonuphis Orensanz (1974) since the latter was preoccupied by Americonuphis Fauchald, 1973. Australonuphis Paxton (1979) and Americonuphis Fauchald (1973), to-gether with Paranorthia Moore (1903) and Rhamphobrachium Ehlers (1887), form a group that includes species with 2 or more anterior setigers with prolonged parapodia and armed with special setae. While Paranorthia and Rhamphobrachium includes species that have the first 2 or 3 anterior segments with enlarged parapodia, Australonuphis and Americonuphis in-cludes macropodous onuphids with the anterior 5-7 parapodia greatly en-larged. These 2 genera can be easily distinguished from each other by the direction of parapodia of the 5 anterior setigers, the distinctive kinds of setae in these setigers and the presence or absence of a digital process at the base of dorsal cirri in parapodia of postmodified setigers. In Americo-nuphis parapodia of modified segments are directed anteroventrally and pro-vided with compound or pseudocompound bidentate hooded hooks and dor-sal cirri without basal appendages, whereas Australonuphis has parapodia
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