On some miscellaneous sea cucumbers (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) in the collections of the South African Museum with three new species

Abstract

A miscellaneous collection of mostly small holothuroids, comprising some 140 specimens, received from the Iziko South African Museum (SAM), are here recorded and/or briefly described. Of these, one jar contained a badly mutilated holothuroid which was unidentifiable and hence not included here. The remaining material comprises 18 nominal species and an indeterminate elasipodid, perhaps representing a species of Benthodytes. Of the 18 nominal species, four are new to science, one of which has already been described as Trachythyone flaccida Thandar, 2013. Another, although represented by a single mature specimen from deep-water off the Transkei coast (Eastern Cape Province), is so different from its congeners that it is also described as a new species, Stereoderma mohammedi n. sp. Two other specimens, although juvenile, are so extraordinary in their composition of ossicles, that they are also taken to represent another new species, ?Temparena trouspetita n. sp. The collection also includes a single specimen of Synallactes, which together with a specimen misidentified as S. viridilimus by Thandar (2008), is also described as a new species, S. quatrami n. sp. The remaining species proved to be either new records for the southern African region or already well-known southern African forms whose distribution ranges have now changed.

Optimized and affordable high‐throughput sequencing workflow for preserved and nonpreserved small zooplankton specimens

“…Preserved samples from archives and collections stored in museums, institutes, or universities, offer vast opportunities for phylogenomic analyses (Evans et al., 2019) or to study temporal changes. Time series allow quantification of the effects of environmental variation or the strength of selection (Hauser et al., 2002; Schraiber, Evans, & Slatkin, 2016), the investigation of extinct taxa (Murray et al., 2017; Shapiro et al., 2002), and can lead to the identification of new species (Thandar, 2018), or clarification of species status which is relevant for conservation (Montano et al., 2018).…”

Designation of a neotype for the dendrochirotid holothuroid, Thyone fusus (Müller) (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea: Dendrochirotida: Thyonidae)

“…in his subsequent papers (Thandar 2021;Thandar & Arumugam 2022), and more recently, in his comprehensive monograph of the southern African sea cucumbers (Thandar 2022).…”

“…The main taxonomic character to justify these decisions was the structure of the calcareous ring with the ossicle assemblage of the introvert. The latter observation was based on the elaborate revision of the Cucumariidae by Panning (1949), a revision which was subsequently used by many other workers since then, such as Pawson & Miller (1981), in their study of some West Atlantic Thyone, by Thandar (1990) in his revision of the southern African Phyllophoridae, and Thandar (1989Thandar ( , 2022, the latter in his comprehensive monograph of the southern African sea cucumbers. A potential neotype was designated in Arumugam's dissertation (2011) based on material from the type locality.…”

A New Species of <i>Massinium</i> (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea: Dendrochirotida: Phyllophoridae: Semperiellinae) from Western Japan

“…The classification here presented is that of Pawson and Fell (1965) as the one by Smirnov (2012) still requires some international recognition, although O'Loughlin et al (2014) and Thandar (2018) have used the one proposed by Smirnov. Family Phyllophoridae Östergren, 1907 Subfamily Semperiellinae Heding and Panning, 1954 Genus Massinium Samyn and Thandar, 2003 Massinium japonicum sp.…”