bishop museum bulletins in cultural and environmental studies

Carlton & Eldredge — Marine Bioinvasions of Hawai‘i
49
Introduced and Cryptogenic Platyhelminthes (continued)
Species Date Vector Native to
Cryptogenic Species
“Turbellaria”
Convolutriloba sp. 1970s BW
Additional Taxon Treated and Its Status
Trematoda
Centrocestus formosanus
Status: Presence in brackish-marine waters in Hawai‘i not known; see discussion
Class “Turbellaria” (flatworms)
Poulter (1987) lists several species of marine flatworms with “cosmopolitan” or disjunct distributions
(for example, “Brazil and Hawaii”, or “Red Sea and Hawaii”). Karling et al. (1972), for example,
newly reported the microturbellarian Gyratrix hermaphroditus Ehrenberg, 1831, a “holeuryhaline
(sic) cosmopolite and ubiquist” from the Pacific Ocean, from the American Pacific coast (as
“Karling, unpublished’), and from Kāne‘ohe Bay, “on coral reefs and in sand in the tidal zone” at
Coconut Island, based upon 1969 collections.
The distribution and systematics of most marine turbellarians are poorly known, and it is thus
difficult to recognize either introduced or cryptogenic species in the Hawaiian fauna. That noted,
there has been and remains striking potential for nonnative shallow water flatworms to be transported
to the Hawaiian Islands in fouling, in ballast water, in ballast rock or sand, and with commercial
oysters, as well as by other means, and careful attention needs to be paid to the probability of synanthropic
dispersal for a great many species.
Order Acoela
Convolutidae
Convolutriloba sp. (?)
Cryptogenic
Poulter (1987) noted the presence of “?Convoluta sp.” in marine laboratory aquaria in Kewalo Basin,
as well as in the laboratory aquaria at Coconut Island and in the wild in Kāne‘ohe Bay. Michael
Hadfield first noted it between 1973 and 1978, but it may have been here much earlier (M. J. Hadfield,
pers. comm., February 2000). This small (to 6 mm) green-brown-orange worm contains symbiotic
algae. It is of interest to note that the acoel Convolutriloba longifissura was found in a seawater aquarium
in Austria which had been set up with “material from the Pacific” (Gschwentner et al., 1999).
Given the potential for convolutid acoel flatworms to be transported transoceanically (Rivest et
al., 1999) the human-mediated dispersal of this distinctive, sometimes abundant species is possible.
Although this conspicuous flatworm was not likely to have been overlooked by C.H. Edmondson in
his explorations of the fauna for many years between the 1920s and 1950s, we conservatively regard
it as cryptogenic.
Order Polycladida
Euplanidae
Taenioplana teredini Hyman, 1944
Introduced
Hyman (1944) described this commensal flatworm as a new species from Teredo burrows (species
not identified) from Honolulu Harbor. Edmondson (1945a) reported it as very abundant in Honolulu
Harbor during 1943–1944, but “conspicuously absent during 1945.” Edmondson (1945b) noted that
it was first observed in 1938, being recovered from burrows of shipworms in test blocks in Honolulu
Harbor; he provides a detailed description of the worm and some notes on its biology. Poulter (1987)
reports it in burrows of Teredo (species not identified) in Honolulu Harbor, Waikīkī, and Kāne‘ohe
Bay. Bishop Museum collections contain material collected by C.H. Edmondson between 1941 and
1944 (the latter being the date of the paratypes). Hyman (1944) noted that the entire life cycle of this