Staurothyone rosacea Semper 1869
Creators: name: Thandar, Ahmed S.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2006
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Echinodermata
Holothuroidea
Dendrochirotida
Cucumariidae
Staurothyone
Staurothyone rosacea

description: Staurothyone rosacea (Semper, 1869)
Figure 11
Thyone rosacea Semper, 1868: 242 (nom.nud.); 1869: 122, pl.1, fig. 2 a–c; Lampert, 1885: 159, pl. 1, fig. 3.
Thyone sargassi Lampert, 1889: 840, fig. 10.
Staurothyone rosacea Panning, 1949: 418, fig. 5; 1964: 159, fig. 1.
Type
Hamburg Museum, Germany, 2901.
Type locality
Red Sea.
Previous South African record
None
Material examined
SAM­A27910, between Bhanga Nek and Kosi Bay, No. 13 reef, KwaZulu­Natal, D. Herbert, SCUBA­dive, 12–20 vii 1987, 6– 18 m, 1 spec.
Description
Specimen previously dried up but prolonged soaking in alcohol softened the body wall to some extent. Form cylindrical, slightly U­shaped, measuring 22 mm along trivium and 3.5 mm in breadth in mid­body. Colour dark reddish brown ventrally, paler dorsally. Podia usually restricted to ambulacra, two rows dorsally and 3–4 rows ventrally, with few also scattered in interambulacra of ventral surface. Mouth anterior, tentacles extremely bushy but number and size variation could not be determined. Anus terminal, encircled by five calcareous teeth, easily demonstrated. Calcareous ring (Figure 10 C) well developed, interradial plates longer than radial plates with a shallow depression on their outer surface. Polian vesicle single, sac­like. Stone canal not observed.
Spicules of body wall include large crosses (Figure 11 A) and minute rosettes (Figure 11 B). Podial deposits include rods with digitated ends. No indication of any secondary branchings to the two primary dichotomous branches of the crosses.
Distribution
West Indian Ocean, including Red Sea.
Remarks
Of the three other species currently classified in Staurothyone, S. vercoi (Joshua & Creed, 1915) is apparently a 20­tentacled form and hence referable to another genus (see Rowe & Gates 1995); S. distincta (Clark, 1938) from North Australia is distinct in possessing, in addition to the crosses and rosettes in the body wall, peculiar minute ‘oblong particles’; and S. inconspicua (Bell, 1887) is a South Australian­Tasmanian species, very close to the Indo­West Pacific S. rosacea and suspected by both Clark (1938) and Panning (1949) to be synonymous with it. However, according to O’ Loughlin (1991) and Materia et al. (1991), S. inconspicua is a seasonal coelomic brooder, while Rowe (pers. comm.) is of the opinion that there are also differences in proportions of crosses in the two species. The current specimen differs from the holotype, re­described by Panning (1949, 1964), in the ambulacral restriction of the podia, the shape of the plates of the calcareous ring, especially the anterior tip of the interradial plates, and the posterior margin of the ring. These are perhaps growth characteristics since the type (40 mm long) is almost twice as large as the specimen here described.
description: Published as part of Thandar, Ahmed S., 2006, New species and new records of dendrochirotid and dactylochirotid holothuroids (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) from off the east coast of South Africa, pp. 1-51 in Zootaxa 1245 on pages 33-34, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.172917