First description of two Paraprionospio species (Polychaeta: Spionidae) from tropical estuarine and coastal waters of India.

The spionid polychaete, Paraprionospio pinnata (Ehlers, 1901), has been widely reported from many estuarine coastal waters of India. The occurrence of Paraprionospio cordifolia (Yokoyama, 2007), Paraprionospio cristata (Zhou, Yokoyama & Li, 2008), and Paraprionospio patiens (Yokoyama, 2007) have also been reported earlier from the East and Southeast Asian coastal waters. We now examined 93 specimens that were collected from the tropical Godavari estuarine system, situated in the Bay of Bengal, on the east coast of India, and the coastal waters of the Arabian Sea, identified them as Paraprionospio cristata and Paraprionospio patiens. These are new records being found in the estuarine and the coastal waters of India. The present study suggests that Paraprionospio species inhabiting Indian estuarine waters are often misidentified as P. pinnata and that, in fact, P. cristata and P. patiens are widely distributed in the estuarine and coastal waters of India. Therefore, further studies are targeting extensive and intensive sampling improve the regional biodiversity studies.