Turbellarian taxonomic database
Proxenetes deltoides Notes
Hartog 1965 (citation)- p. 110, "P. deltoides is a characteristic species for the uppermost part of the eulittoral belt. It seems to avoid strong water movements, as it has not been found in the tidal creeks. In the ultimate branches of salt-marsh creeks, where the water has lost its velocity, and in the creeks which are reached by the flood water only during very high tides, the species has been found in small numbers. In salt-marsh pools, not connected with a system of creeks, the species occurs mainly along the water-edge. In the Puccinellietum maritimae its often quite abundant between the roots of Puccinellia maritima or in the algal felt which covers the earth."
Hartog 1965 (citation)- p. 110-111, "In the estuarine waters of the Deltaic area the species is limited to the euhalinicum and the polyhalinicum, its boundary coincides more or less withe the average annual isohaline of 10 o/oo CL' at high tide. In the Telluchtse Weel, a pool west of Goes, P. deltoides occurs at an average salinity of 8.07 o/oo Cl'. The lowest value measured by me was 2.20 o/oo CL', the highest was 15.5 o/oo Cl'. This pool became isolated from the sea in 1831. Its flora and fauna are composed of numerous euryhaline marine species and true brackish-water species, and may be classified as polyhaline (Den Hartog, 1964b)."
Hartog 1965 (citation)- p. 110-111, "There are only a few observations available on the food of P. deltoides. I have found some specimens with one or more nematodes in the intestinal tract, in some other specimens the gut contained diatom valves, and once I had a specimen that had swallowed an oligochaete. Once I have found a parasitic gregarine in the body of P. deltoides. Among the specimens I collected at Aberlady Bay there was one with a brown, elliptic egg-capsule in the atrium genitale commune. The length of the egg-capsule was 40 u. In November 1964 I collected in the Verdronken Zwarte Polder a specimen in which the efferent tract of the female genital apparatus was well-developed, but in which the copulatory organ was barely cuticularized, the contours being just visible. The spine apparatus was completely absent. Therefore, it seems that P. deltoides is proterogynous."
Hartog 1966 (citation)- p. 567, 'In the guts of these specimens I found oligochaetes and nematodes.'
Notes from synonyms
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