Morphological and molecular study of Syllinae (Annelida, Syllidae) from Bermuda, with the description of five new species.

Although polychaetes from the Bermuda Archipelago have been studied since the beginning of the twentieth century, syllids have been particularly neglected in this area, which is surprising considering this family is usually a dominant group in marine benthic ecosystems. To fill this knowledge gap, we have carried out an extensive analysis of Bermudan Syllidae, combining morphological and molecular data including four nuclear and mitochondrial markers (, , and ). We have identified and established the phylogenetic position of five new species, n. sp., n. sp., n. sp., n. sp. and n. sp., together with cf. . Overall, our results extend the knowledge on the diversity of Syllidae in Bermuda, increasing the number of species present in the area to 25. Our results also recover and as non-monophyletic genera, for which traditional diagnostic morphological features do not accurately reflect their evolutionary histories, and thus we propose that these groups should be reorganized based on molecular characters.