Sea apples

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Sea apples
Sea apple (Pseudocolochirus axiologus)

Sea apple ( Pseudocolochirus axiologus )

Systematics
Sub-stem : Eleutherozoa (Eleutherozoa)
Class : Sea cucumber (Holothuroidea)
Subclass : Dendrochirotacea
Order : Dendrochirotida
Family : Cucumariidae
Genre : Sea apples
Scientific name
Pseudocolochirus
Pearson , 1910

Sea apples ( Pseudocolochirus ) are echinoderms (Echinodermata) from the class of sea ​​cucumbers (Holothuroidea). They live in the coral reefs of the Indo-Pacific from Sri Lanka to Australia and Japan at depths of up to 25 meters.

features

Sea apples have a plump body. They are much less elongated than most other sea cucumbers. At the head end there is a wreath of ten strongly branched tentacles . Symmetrically , at equal intervals, there are five longitudinal rows of ambulacral feet on the rotating body. Sea apples are often very colorful, with strong red, yellow, blue, or white tones. The body, tentacles, mouth opening and ambulacral feet are often colored differently. It is not yet clear whether differently colored specimens also belong to different species. Sea apples grow up to eight inches long.

behavior

The animals usually sit still and hold on to a place in the coral reef that is favorable for catching plankton with their ambulacral feet . The tentacles are regularly inserted into the mouth opening located in the center of the tentacle rim and any food that has got stuck is picked up. In the event of danger, sea apples can expel the sticky and, due to the holothurine , poisonous Cuvier tubes from the anus, in which an attacker is supposed to get entangled. To this day nothing is known about the reproduction of the animals.

literature

  • D. Knop: Pseudocolochirus spp. Sea apples . In: Coral. Marine aquarium specialist magazine . 25 (February / March), 2004, ISSN  1439-779X .
  • H. Erhardt, H. Moosleitner: Mergus sea water atlas . tape 3 : invertebrates. Mergus-Verlag, Melle 1997, ISBN 3-88244-103-8 .

Web links

Commons : Sea apples ( Pseudocolochirus )  - Collection of images, videos and audio files