New Sclerodactylidae Fauna (Holothuroidea) from the Argentine Sea

MARTINEZ, MI; PENCHASZADEH, PE

Rosario Beach

Conferencia; 6th North American Echinoderm Conference; 2011

There are 27 species of Holothuroidea reported from Argentina. These species are included in three orders: Apodida, Molpadiida, and Dendrochirotida. The latter includes three families: Psolidae, Cucumariidae, and Phyllophoridae, with no register, until now, of Sclerodactylidae. The present work identifies two new species from the family Sclerodactylidae, with distribution in the Argentine Sea. Surrounding the esophagus is a ring of large calcareous plates (the calcareous ring), which forms a support for the esophagus and is a point of insertion for different muscles. This structure has projections in Sclerodactylids and is entire for the ring pieces and divided in few pieces for the projections. Both new species have different podia distribution, representative of two subfamilies. One species is a member of the subfamily Sclerodactylinae, with podia all over the body, and the other is a Sclerothyoninae, with podia only on the ambulacra. This is the first report on the family Sclerodactylidae in the southwestern Atlantic.