New sea cucumber species from the seamounts on the Southwest Indian Ocean Ridge (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea: Aspidochirotida, Elasipodida, Dendrochirotida)
Author
O’Loughlin, P. Mark
Author
Mackenzie, Melanie
Author
VandenSpiegel, Didier
text
Memoirs of Museum Victoria
2013
2013-12-10
70
37
50
https://museumsvictoria.com.au/collections-research/journals/memoirs-of-museum-victoria/volume-70-2013/pages-37-50/
journal article
10.24199/j.mmv.2013.70.04
1447-2554
12208349
DECF956F-C474-4C8D-82AF-48FD0EC0BB4A
Psolus atlantis
O’Loughlin
sp. nov.
Zoobank LSID. http://zoobank.org/
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:
DE8353F7-D506-4264-8638-9FF3EA29254A
Figures 1
,
8
,
9
,
10
Material examined
.
Holotype
. Southwest Indian Ocean Ridge,
Atlantis
Bank
,
32.72ºS
57.25ºE
,
1117 m
, JC066, event 8–5, parent no. 2547, specimen no. JC066–3686, ROV,
10 Dec 2011
, NHMUK 2013.6.
Description
. Body oval with slight posterior rounded taper, body
28 mm
long, up to
17 mm
wide, up to
7 mm
high at oral cone; dorsal and lateral body covered by imbricating large multilayered scale ossicles of variable sizes, up to
7 mm
wide, not perforated for tube feet, lateral marginal scales very small; dorsal and lateral scales sparsely but distinctly granular, granular appearance caused by pyramidal projections on the multilayered scale ossicles, not caused by small surface ossicles; oral cone dorsal with slight pyramidal elevation, 5 triangular interradial oral valves separated by 5 narrow radial oral scales, oral cone not discrete with dorsal scales encroaching basally on oral scales; anus dorsal posterior, surrounded by an irregular cluster of small scales.
Distinct thin-walled sole, overhung marginally by small lateral scales; inner marginal, irregular, single to zigzag to double series of tube feet with diameters about 0.6 mm; outer marginal, single series of smaller inconspicuous tube feet with diameters about 0.3 mm; a few tube feet on midventral ambulacrum anteriorly and posteriorly, but lacking midventral series of tube feet.
Ossicles in central sole small, thick, smooth crosses and plates with up to 7 perforations, ossicles up to 200 µm long; inner tube feet endplates with irregular small perforations centrally and irregular larger perforations marginally, margin smooth and not denticulate, endplate diameters up to about 400 µm; tube foot support ossicles irregular curved plates with more perforations than the ossicles in the sole, up to about 20, lengths up to about 200 µm long.
Colour. Live: red dorsally. Preserved: white.
Distribution
. Southwest Indian Ocean,
Atlantis
Bank,
1117
m.
Etymology
. Named, in apposition, for the
Atlantis
Bank
on the Southwest Indian Ocean Ridge from which this specimen was collected.
Remarks
. The morphological characters that distinguish, in combination,
P. atlantis
O’Loughlin
sp. nov.
from all other
Psolus
Oken, 1815
species
are: five discrete triangular oral valves separated by single, thin rectangular oral plates; conspicuously granuliform oral, dorsal and lateral scales; absence of a midventral ambulacral series of tube feet; absence of any dorsal ossicles in addition to the large scales; small thick smooth perforated plate ossicles with fewer than eight perforations in the midsole; absence of cups or concave plate ossicles in the sole. We note the significant depth of occurrence (
1117 m
) of
P. atlantis
, relative to the occurrence of most
Psolus
species.
We have compared
P. atlantis
with other southern
Psolus
species
directly or in the works of
Carriol and Féral (1985)
,
Cherbonnier (1974)
,
Deichmann (1930)
,
Ekman (1925)
,
Ludwig and Heding (1935)
,
Mackenzie and Whitfield (2011)
,
O’Loughlin and Whitfield (2010)
,
Thandar (2009)
,
Théel (1886a
,
1886b
) and
Vaney (1906
,
1914
).