Sea Cucumber Skin Up Close! Bizarre & Beautiful!

Thelenota ananas Via Wikipedia commons. Photo by Nick Hobgood

Cool Crowdsourced Photo time! This week..some gorgeous closeups of the neat skin textures on tropical sea cucumbers!

Some of these give you an idea of how colorful and unusual the skin in sea cucumbers can be. This one is called  Thelenota rubolineata (the species name literally means "red lines"). This is an example of what the whole animal of one of the pics below looks like...

What do they feel like? Sort of soft and rubbery. Firm. And yes, people eat these species...

Here's a nice roundup of similar closeup photo essays of other echinoderms 

1. Here's the one for Up close Starfish! 
2. Another one showing close ups on Crinoids (aka Feather stars)
3. COLORS! in brittle stars! 
4. Crabs that live in sea cucumber anuses! here.
5. Worms & Snails that live on sea cucumbers! here. 

Below.. you will find many different close ups of the skin of sea cucumbers.

this one is Thelenota I think...

Some striking full body pics...

Snails that eat Starfish! Predation in the tropical Indo-Pacific!

In cold and temperate water habitats, starfish, especially asteriid starfish are often predatory. ESPECIALLY on mollusks! Famously on bivalves and clams but also quite a few gastropods aka snails.

But in the tropics, we often find the tables are turned! Snails, especialy giant snails, such as these Giant Tritons (Charonia sp.) are big, ol' meanie predators on several often, equally large and heavily armored (or at least well-defended) starfish species...


The Triton Vs. Crown of Thorns (Acanthaster planci) 
Just walked out of Godzilla and want to see two big monsters fight it out?? You've come to the right place!

The "Triton's Trumpet" is a large snail with a shell that is often up to two feet long. Because it is large and showy, it is often sought after as a souvenir.   Here we have not one but TWO videos of these giant snails attacking the very spiny Crown of Thorns starfish, a voraceous predator of corals





When the snails get to work, they often appear to be successful. But even if not, with the crown-of-thorns starfish there's *literally* many more fish (or starfish) in the sea!

this did not end well for the starfish.


The Triton vs. the "Blue Linckia" aka Linckia laevigata
Here..what you are seeing is NOT a hermit crab, but one of these giant triton snails finishing off its dinner, a blue Linckia laevigata, eating it disk first with the legs sticking out of the shell's opening..


Here's what this looks like with a bit more perspective...

The Triton vs. the Cushion Star (Culcita novaeguineae)
Another target species?  The big, round, almost pillow shaped starfish Culcita novaeguineae!

A pic to give you some perspective...


Other Indo-Pacific species include Choriaster granulatus 

Nardoa novaecaledoniae (Ophidiasteridae)


And in the Atlantic Caribbean (Cozumel), this "triton" snail attacking the tropical Oreaster reticulatus.  Honestly, I'm not sure if I've ever heard of this.. maybe something new? Will have to check...

Attacking a small specimen of Oreaster.. maybe O. clavatus?

via Wikipedia from NOAA photo library

And of course, its not always, the BIG snails.. the tiny ones can be predatory as well.. Here are individuals of Phos nodicostatum (Buccinidae) feeding on the arm of a crown of thorns..



NEXT UP! Pt. 2 to this.. SNAIL PARASITES!! 

Synaptid Sea Cucumbers! Big, Long & Wormy or small and live in bunches on sponges!

Image by Mark Atwell

A few words today about SYNAPTID sea cucumbers! (i.e, Family Synaptidae). These are a family of unusual sea cucumbers which are observed in shallow/SCUBA depth waters in the tropics! There are over 120 species of synaptids which occur primarily in the Indo-Pacific.

Synaptid sea cucumbers move pretty actively via peristalsis (i.e., body pulsates in a manner similar to that of worms. They seem to have lost any external manifestations of tube feet..

Image by Jay Dryden

Synaptids have a well-developed array of feather-like feeding tentacles they use to move organic food into their mouths. Here's a video that shows one alive and kicking!

                       

 giant synaptid sea cucumber ! ....from outaspace from SgBeachBum on Vimeo.

As the video shows, synaptids move along the bottom in a snake-like-fashion using their tentacles to move food into their mouth as they move as this species (Synapta maculata) from Lembeh Strait in Indonesia is doing..

Image by Bernard DuPont

This shows how long these get.. Some reach 6 FEET long...

Image by shamsulazar

Some are decoratively patterned!

Image by ania115

But while some species are huge and massive, others are tiny and form HUGE aggregations...

In Synaptula spp., you'll often see hundreds of them on a single sponge! What I like to think of as a veritable city of sea cucumbers!

See all those wormy white things on the sponge? THOSE ARE SEA CUCUMBERS! (the genus Synaptula sp.).

image by Enice Khoo (mermate)

Another dense sponge colony overrun by Synaptula!

image by Bernard DuPont

Here's a less populous one..

image by Tom Puchner

More!

image by Alfonsator

some of them crawl around on purple sponges!

Image by Wild Singapore

image by Wild Singapore

This is not the same sponge colony but a close up of a different one.. it gives you an idea of what's they look like (close up).

image by Rob Jeff

But what are they doing? Presumably this posture of them reaching upright into the water is feeding,i.e., taking advantage of the water currents.  Sea cucumbers living on a sponge is actually a pretty convenient place to live.. as sponge filter water, they likely accumulate all sorts of potential food particles that Synaptula can take advantage of...

Amazingly, this is only the TIP of the iceberg where these animals are concerned..but that will have to wait for a future post!

FIRE Urchins! Brilliant Shallow water cousins of the "tam o shanter"/pancake urchins!

Image by Aboireoujtulchien

Last week I reviewed deep-sea echinothurioid urchins aka the "tam o shanter urchin" aka the "pancake" urchin, etc., etc.  I spoke of these more generally in an earlier post. But for some reason I've not had a chance to really showcase their shallow water relatives!

From SERPENT

Shallow water echinothurioid urchins are "proper" fire urchins. As opposed to these other "fire colored" spiny urchins, such as Astropyga which are diadematoid urchins. A completely different group!!

"Spiny" urchins are distinguished by the presence of an Anal Cone. See that white bulb on top? THAT is where the poop comes out!  You don't see that in "proper" fire urchins as we'll be seeing.. Note also that the spines are much longer.

(image by Ben Naden)

I've discussed Astropyga on the blog before (here)...

These urchins all belong to the genus Asthenosoma which includes six species spread throughout the Indo-Pacific region.  Here's a neat video that gives you an idea of what they look like..

Yes, the colors are a huge shift in appearance, but similar to their deep-sea cousins, Asthenosoma also has the distinctive "walking" spines...

On this image of Asthenosoma varium the walking spines form a fringe around the lower oral side composed of distinctly yellow spines. My understanding is that most of these prefer soft, muddy bottoms.

Image by Ben Naden

Some video!

Compare to the walking spines on this deep-sea echinothurioid.

Image by NEPTUNE Canada

From there we start to see more differences as the spines seem to be bunched up in bundles...
But they remain venomous...

Image by JianXu

Some workers have hypothesized that the poisonous spines in deep-water echinothuroids function as hypodermic needles (here by Roland Emson & Craig Young)

And if its not clear by now, YES. They're pretty damn venomous. My understanding is that its very painful.. but typically not lethal.

and they certainly do seem like they do, don't they??

Image by Bruce Magun

Image by Daniel Stassen

Close ups! showing some of the brillaint colors, spine patterns and etc.. I suspect most of these are Asthenosoma varium

Image by MerMate

Image by Daphna130

Image by lupopeye

Image by maractwin

Image by Nick Hobgood

Image by B. Maither

Image by Russell Taylor

Here's some differing species from around the Indo-Pacific

From the Red Sea, Asthenosoma marisrubi with a more mellow look...

Image by Key of Life

Here are the spines..still basically the same but different color and slightly different shape..

Image by Le Congre

Asthenosoma spp. showing many different colors...

Image by S1mon Mar5h

Image by Clark Chang

Image by Jesse Claggett

Image by Richard Barnett

What's even MORE interesting? These urchins have tiny critters which live as commensals(?) among the highly poisonous spines! (this neat vid also shows a LOT of close up details)
Urchin Riders from liquidguru on Vimeo.
Some of the little buggers actually "hollow" out a space, clearing out spines where they can live! You can see the bare patch on this one...

Image by Klaus Stiefel

In addition to all the various crustaceans, Amazingly. Here is a benthic ctenophore (which I've written about here) ON A FIRE URCHIN!! (the white blobby bits are the feeding tentacles)  Mind. blown!!  and incidentally.. a likely first occurrence recorded....

Image by Mark Atwell

Happy Spring! Here's some bright pink and orange sea cucumbers (sea apples)! WOO!

Fantastic image by Arthur Anker-Colochirus quadrangularis 

Today, we welcome spring with these awesome brightly colored sea cucumbers from the tropical Indo-Pacific!

My thanks again to Arthur Anker, WildSingapore and other photographers who have put their images up to enjoy!

Fantastic image by Arthur Anker-Colochirus quadrangularis

Cercodemas anceps by Arthur Anker

Another Cercodemas from Wildsingapore!

A nice one of Cercodemas with the feeding arms extended

And here's BOTH Cercodemaas AND Colochirus! 

Pseudocolochirus olivaceus. Images below by Arthur Anker, Singapore Marine Biodiversity Survey.

Another nice Pseudocolochirus shot by Jeff Mullins (underwater komodo)

The feeding end of Pseudocolochirus. Image by Arne Kuilman

A nice close up of the tentacles in a sea apple. Image by Pat M. Williams

and finally, here's  a video of one in its habitat (this one from Hong Kong)