Polycirrinae Malmgren, 1867
Hauchiella Levinsen, 1893
Hauchiella sp. 1
Voucher. VINSON WEST: station 1MFB.
Diagnosis. Voucher specimen is a single, incomplete and damaged specimen; relatively robust, fragment about 7mm long and about 1.8mm wide; anterior part of the body is more robust, then tapering; number of segments not established. All tentacles missing. Large, convoluted upper lip is much wider than long. Thoracic segments strongly annulated, narrow and tessellated. Genital papillae not confirmed (damage to the tissue covers a large part of thorax).
Remarks. Given the complete lack of chaetae, there are very few characters available to distinguish between species of Hauchiella. For a long time, only the type species of the genus Hauchiella tribullata (McIntosh, 1869) described from St Magnus Bay, Shetlands, Scotland, from 165 m was known and reported widely, including reports from the Southern Ocean. The holotype of this species was reported by Nogueira et al. (2015) to be large and robust (about 20mm long, up to 2mm wide), with very few buccal tentacles remaining (all uniformly cylindrical), with a large, convoluted upper lip of width greater than length, and large, rounded nephridial papillae on segments 6–8. Hauchiella renilla Hutchings and Glasby, 1986 was described as a second species in this genus more than 100 year later and distinguished from H. tribullata by its smaller size and absence of genital papillae. Only very recently a third species Hauchiella tentaculata Nogueira, Hutchings and Carrerette, 2015 was added and distinguished form the other two species by modified long tentacles and inconspicuous or absent nephridia (=not visible through the body wall). It is, therefore, likely that Falkland Island specimen represent a new species, but well preserved material will be necessary to formally describe this species.
