Abstract:
The early life histories of more than one-half of the most common
benthic invertebrates from the region of Woods Hole, Massachusetts have
not been described. In many instances it has not even been
determined whether or not the development of a species includes a planktonic
stage. Larvae taken from the plankton often cannot be
identified to species or even to genus because descriptions of their
morphology do not exist; those descriptions that do exist are widely
scattered in the biological literature. The extent of information that is available for the identification of
larval forms is tabulated here for the most common species within the
major benthic taxa in the Woods Hole region: gastropods, bivalve
mollusks, decapod and stomatopod crustaceans, cirriped
crustaceans, polychaete annelids, and echinoderms. (Not included are amphipods and isopods, and other peracarid
crustacea, which do not have planktonic larval stages.)
