Spotted worm sea cucumber
| Spotted worm sea cucumber | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Spotted worm cucumber ( Synapta maculata ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Synapta maculata | ||||||||||||
| Chamisso & Eysenhardt , 1821 |
The spotted worm sea cucumber ( Synapta maculata ) is the largest sea cucumber when stretched out, with a maximum length of 2.5 meters . The animals occur in the Red Sea and the tropical Indo-Pacific from East Africa to Japan and the islands of the southern Pacific. They live in shallow water, at depths of two to 25 meters on soft soils, between algae, on sandy surfaces and on broken mussels. It lives solitary and is very common in places.
features
The soft and spongy body of the spotted worm sea cucumber reaches a diameter of five centimeters. It can be stretched a lot and also contracted for a shorter time. When the sea cucumber is touched, the human hand sticks to the skin, which is due to the anchor-shaped calcareous sclerites in the animal's skin. If you lift the sea cucumber out of the water, its skin can tear. The spotted worm-sea cucumber has 15 feathery tentacles around its mouth, which it uses to dab organic matter and biofilms from the seabed . Their color is variable. It is always speckled and has a whitish, brown, brown-yellow or bronze base color. Characteristic are five brown or yellowish longitudinal bands and numerous brown transverse bands.
Nothing is known about the reproduction of the spotted worm sea cucumber.
literature
- Harry Erhardt / Horst Moosleitner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 3 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-103-8
- Harry Erhardt / Hans A. Baensch : Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 4 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-023-6
- Svein A. Fossa / Alf Jacob Nilsen: Coral reef aquarium Volume 6 , Schmettkamp Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-928819-18-6
