Dashed sea cucumber
| Dashed sea cucumber | ||||||||||||
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Dashed sea cucumber ( Pearsonothuria graeffei ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Pearsonothuria graeffei | ||||||||||||
| ( Semper , 1868) |
The pearsonothuria ( Pearsonothuria graeffei ), also Strichel-Seewalze called, comes in the Red Sea , and in the tropical Indo-Pacific from the Indo-Australian archipelago to the islands of the southern Pacific before. It lives on coral reefs , at depths of 2 to 40 meters, is active during the day and night and well camouflaged by its color. It is common in places.
features
The dashed sea cucumber is 30 to 35, less often up to 50 centimeters long. Their color is light gray, light brown or light green with irregular brown spots, narrow black cross lines and small black dots. The skin is covered by numerous papillae with white tips. At the bottom it has three rows of tubular feet, which are separated from each other by dark ribbons. Its 25 mouth tentacles are black and point downwards. The disc-shaped ends have white borders.
Young of the dashed sea cucumber
Young animals up to four to five centimeters in size have a completely different color pattern. They imitate the poisonous nudibranch snails Phyllidia coelestris and Phyllidia varicosa ( Mertens' mimicry ) and only take on the adult color when they have exceeded the maximum length of the snails.
The dashed sea cucumber feeds on organic particles and small animals of the meiofauna , which it ingests from the ground with its wide mouth tentacles. She digs through the sediment and scans corals and fleshy algae. She can climb well and also overcomes vertical obstacles. The dashed sea cucumber has Cuvier tubes , which it only expels in an extreme emergency. Nothing is known about their increase.
literature
- Erhardt / Moosleitner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 3 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-103-8
- Erhardt / Baensch: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 5 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-115-1
- Schumacher / Hinterkircher: Lower sea animals , BLV, ISBN 3-405-14854-5
- SA Fossa, AJ Nilsen: Coral reef aquarium Volume 6 , Schmettkamp Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-928819-18-6
Web links
- Pearsonothuria graeffei inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2013.2. Posted by: Conand, C., Gamboa, R. & Purcell, S., 2010. Retrieved February 12, 2014.