natural, history

advantage to any species transported into unpopulated regions and may be part ofthe explanation of the wide distribution of some of the Sout~ Pacific peregrines. Withunipare~tal reproduction there may be associated loss of male terminalia so that spermno longer can be transferred even when produced and/or loss of spermathecae sothat sperm cannot be received in a copulatory act. Testes however still are developedin anarsenosomphic and/or athecal individuals. Unfortunately male gonads havebeen of exceedingly little use to the earthworm taxonomist, but male terminalia andspermathecae together are of more importance for identification of species, in thegenus Pheretima. than all the rest of the animal! Furthermore, with uniparental reproductionthere may be much greater possibility of establishment of mutant racesto complicate a taxonomic nightmare.SUMMARYRennell Island has a pauper fauna of seven (_;_ ?) species of earthworms. Species ofDichogaster. originally from America or Africa, have gotten there, at least indirectly,as a result of European activity in the last few centuries. The six species of Pheretimawere brought directly or indirectly to Rennell from large land masses of Malaysia tothe west and possibly before European invasion of the Pacific. One of these speciesreproduces biparentally but in the others reproduction may be mostly uniparental.REFERENCESGATES, G. E., 1937: Notes on some species of Dralrida and Pheretima with descriptionsof three new species of Phererima. - Bull. Mus. Compo Zoo!. Harvard,80: 305-335.PICKFORD, G. E., 1929: On an interesting earthworm from the New Hebrides. - Ann.Mag. Nat. Hist. (10), 3: 493-498.STEPHENSON, J., 1930: The Oligochaeta. - Oxford.WOLFF, T., 1955: I. Introduction. - The Natural History of Rennell Island, BritishSolomon Islands, I: 9-31.23