Sipunculus

Sipunculus is a genus of worms belonging to the family Sipunculidae.

Taxonomy


Sipunculus is a variant spelling of the Latin ("little tube"), a diminutive of sipho from Greek  (síphōn, "tube, pipe").

Siphunculus was used for fossilized worm-shaped organisms like Siphunculus scaber by the Welsh naturalist Edward Lhuyd in 1699. In the next century, the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus used the scientific name Sipunculus nudus for a species of worms in his 1766 Systema Naturae. In 1814, the French zoologist Constantine Samuel Rafinesque used the feminine form Sipuncula to distinguish the family including S. nudus; this was later elevated to the Sipuncula class, the family being renamed Sipunculidae and the species reorganized into different genera.

Distribution
The genus has cosmopolitan distribution.

Species
Species included in Sipunculus are:


 * Sipunculus angasoides Chen, 1963
 * Sipunculus clavatus de Blainville, 1827
 * Sipunculus corallicolus Pourtalès, 1851
 * Sipunculus echinorhynchus Chiaje, 1823
 * Sipunculus gulfus Hylleberg, 2014
 * Sipunculus indicus Peters, 1850
 * Sipunculus lomonossovi Murina, 1968
 * Sipunculus longipapillosus Murina, 1968
 * Sipunculus macrorhynchus de Blainville, 1827
 * Sipunculus marcusi Ditadi, 1976
 * Sipunculus microrhynchus de Blainville, 1827
 * Sipunculus mundanus Selenka & Bülow, 1883
 * Sipunculus norvegicus Danielssen, 1869
 * Sipunculus nudus Linnaeus, 1766
 * Sipunculus phalloides (Pallas, 1774)
 * Sipunculus polymyotus Fisher, 1947
 * Sipunculus robustus Keferstein, 1865
 * Sipunculus rubens Costa, 1860
 * Sipunculus rufofimbriatus Blanchard, 1849
 * Sipunculus saccatus Linnaeus, 1767
 * Sipunculus thailandicus Hylleberg, 2014
 * Sipunculus zenkevitchi Murina, 1969