Morphological characteristics of four species of Scolelepis De Blainville, 1828 were analyzed using morphometric analysis in order to evaluate whether these species can be discriminated using morphometric data. Furthermore, new informative characters that can be used for a reassessment of the taxonomy of the genus were also provided. The analysis based on canonical variables applied to the species revealed that S. chilensis, S. goodbody and S. squamata are more similar in shape to each other than with S. acuta. The most significant characters for discriminating the four species were gill length, length of the palp from the base until the twentieth chaetiger, length and width of prostomium and width and length of chaetigers 5 and 20. Of these, we highlight the shape of the gills and prostomium since they have been used as diagnostic characters in several taxonomic studies of the genus.
Morphometry; Scolelepis; Multivariate analysis; Polychaeta
