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Polychaete Fauna of Ranong

The table belong presents a summary of polychaetes collected and identified to various levels by the workshop participants. Family and genera lists are arranged alphabetically. The family list is quite comprehensive, reflecting the relative easy of identification at this level, coupled with good keys. Similarly genera list is also quite comprehensive. However, the species list is distinctly limited and full of tentative identifications. There are two reasons for this. First the limited time participants had to work at this level and second, the limited taxonomic literature which exists. Although a good selection of literature was available at the workshop, it proved to be very difficult to identify many of the species. Even species, such as Diopatra neapolitana, which appeared to be well categorised, showed conspicuous differences with descriptions in the literature. The main impediment to quick and accurate identifications of the fauna of SE Asian remains the lack of modern taxonomic analyses and taxonomic treatments.