PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON lll(4):807-822. 1998. New species of bathyal and abyssal Sabellariidae (Annelida: Polychaeta) from near New Caledonia (southwest Pacific Ocean) Jean-Paul Lechapt and David W. Kirtleyf (JPL) Laboratoire maritime de Dinard, Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 17 Avenue George V, F-35800 Dinard, France; (DWK) P.O. Box 2713, Vero Beach, Florida 32961-2713, U.S.A. Abstract. — Specimens described in this work were collected during the BIO-CAL and BIOGEOCAL cruises (Biology and Geology of New Caledonia) in 1985 and 1987 conducted by the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris, France). All of the 488 specimens collected from depths between 440 m and 1870 m belong to the subfamily Lygdaminae Kirtley, 1994, which is charac-terized by the presence of four parathoracic segments. Among these specimens, we recognize four genera, including Bathysabellaria Lechapt & Gruet, 1993 with two species, a new species of Lygdamis Kinberg, 1867, two new species of Phalacrostemma Marenzeller, 1895, and a new species of Tetreres Caullery, 1913. All of these species are set apart from other known species by the shape of the outer and inner paleae and by their geographic and bathymetric distri-butions. These collections illustrate the uniqueness and richness of the poly-chaete fauna of the Sabellariidae of this Pacific area. Except for the relatively hmited accounts of Hoagland (1920:627), TreadweU (1926: 191), CauUery (1944:54-66) from the Phil-ippines and hidonesia, and that of Gibbs (1971:101-211) from the Solomon Islands, the benthic polychaete fauna from great depths of this geographic area remains poorly known, especially for the family Sabellari-idae. The material on which this study is based was collected during the 1985 and 1987 cruises of the "Biology of New Cale-donia" project, BIOCAL and BIOGEOCAL, respectively, conducted by the French Na-tional Museum of Natural History of Paris. Specimens were collected with a Waren-type rock dredge (Stations DW) or with a beam trawl (Stations CP), fixed in a sea-water formalin solution and stored in 70% ethanol. The material was received from the Centre National de tri d'Oceanographie t Deceased July 1997. Biologique, Brest, France, examined under low power magnification and selected mor-phological features were studied by scan-ning electron microscopy (SEM). All type material is deposited in the National Mu-seum of Natural History, Paris (MNHNP). Family Sabellariidae Subfamily Lygdaminae Kirtley, 1994 The family Sabellariidae was subdivided by Kirtley (1994:14) into two subfamilies, the Sabellariinae with three parathoracic segments and the Lygdaminae with four parathoracic segments. All specimens con-sidered here belong to the Lygdaminae, the genera being distinguished as follows: la. Compound (branched) feeding tentacles Lygdamis lb. Simple (unbranched) feeding tentacles 2 2a. Operculum completely divided Phalacrostemma 2b. Operculum not completely divided ... 3
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