The poorly-known Spionidae genus Lindaspio (Annelida: Polychaeta) and the finding of Lindaspio sebastiena Bellan, Dauvin & Laubier, 2003 (Fig. 11), from an oil-field off Congo (Western Africa)

The genus Lindaspio was created by Blake & Maciolek (1992), to accommodate two original spionid polychaetes species recovered from two different sedimented deep-sea hydrothermal vent areas in the Pacific. Later, polychaete material obtained from sediment at 150 m depth near an oil platform of the offshore oil field of N’Kossa, Congo (Central Western Africa), yielded a third species, Lindaspio sebastiena Bellan, Dauvin & Laubier, 2003 . Other reports of this genus are very rare, the last one being a yet undescribed Lindaspio species from a whale-fall site on the S„o Paulo Ridge (Sumida et al. 2016). The four species therefore appear to share a preference for reducing environments such as deep-sea sediments rich in decaying organic matter or hydrothermal fluids. Among their peculiarities, these species display unusually large gills, likely an adaptation to life in low-oxygen environments; in L. sebastiena, gills even display a “felting” that may be useful in further increasing gill surface area.