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The polychaete Perinereis macropus (Claparède, 1870) (Nereididae) is present in the Gulf of Gabes, but its reproductive biology is unknown. An intensive study was conducted from August 2004 to July 2005 to characterize the life cycle of a population in the mouth of wadi Ferd in Gabes. The examination of sexual products allows us to describe the morphological oocytes aspects at different stages. The results show that P. macropus has an asynchronous oogenesis. Moreover, the biometric study of oocytes growth allows us to clarify the female sexual cycle. The female maturity occurs in April and the mature oocyte diameter is approximately 250+/-32.67 microm. However, spawning occurs in May, when the seawater temperature starts rising. We propose that the reproductive season stretches from March to June in the Gulf of Gabes.

Coupling effects of hydrodynamics and predatory activity of Nepthys hombergii (Savigny) (Polychaeta: Nephtyidae) on emigration of Hediste diversicolor (O.F. Müller) (Polychaeta: Nereidae) recruits were assessed in a flume. Experiments carried out in still water conditions and in the flume flow showed that predatory activity of N. hombergii is independent of the presence or the absence of flow and does not statistically influence the recruit emigration rate. It appears, however, that hydrodynamics is an inhibiting factor for the emigration of H. diversicolor which occurs in the absence of flow. The comparison of these results with literature data suggests that recruits could use hydrodynamics to leave an unsuitable habitat according to the species mobility range.

A quantitative study of elementary granules in neuron axons of the nervous chain of Owenia fusiformis (Annelid polychaete) shows that daily variations of the number of secretory granules occur in unamputated animals and in ventral tissue cultures. These variations are correlated with the thythm of the cell cycle.

In Nereis pelagica, the existence of an additional nerve cord grafted dorsally induces the differentiation on the dorsal face of the regenerate of a supernumerary area with ventral characteristics, provided the grafted nerve cord regenerates posteriorly. These results led us to think that the dorse-ventral differentiation of the body wall doesn't depend upon the nature of the stump region but is controlled by the nerve cord regenerating in the area.

In Nereis pelagica, graft of dorsal or ventral parts of a regenerate edified in the absence of nerve cord (=aneurogenic) on the ventral or dorsal face of a normal host demonstrates a completely dorsal nature of the body wall in these special regenerates. The results indicate that the nerve cord is involved in setting up regenerate dorso-ventral polarity by fixing differentiation of the ventral characters in the area located near by; without it , only the dorsal character is expressed.

The reproduction of Nereid Perinereis cultrifera in the English Channel and the Atlantic is of an epitokous type. The same Nereid in the Mediterranean (Bay of Alger) has been described as atokous (Marcel, 1962) and since that time epitoky in mediterranean specimens has been considered to be an accidental phenomenon. However, in the present study polychaetes collected at Salammbô (near Tunis) show that those P. cultrifera reproduce exclusively by epitoky.

3H Trp and 14C Lys incorporation in proteins from chromatin of normal and regenerating animals, purified on metrizamide, show that the synthesis of these proteins is different in the two cases.