Kolostoneura Becher, 1909

O’Loughlin, P. Mark & VandenSpiegel, Didier, 2010, A revision of Antarctic and some Indo-Pacific apodid sea cucumbers (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea: Apodida), Memoirs of Museum Victoria 67, pp. 61-95 : 75

Kolostoneura Becher, 1909

Kolostoneura Becher, 1909: 42 .—H. L. Clark, 1921: 164.— Mortensen, 1925: 384–386.— Heding, 1928: 277, 278.— Pawson, 1970: 44.— Smirnov, 1998: 519.

Diagnosis (of type species, following Dendy and Hindle 1907 and Mortensen 1925). Taeniogyrinid genus with 10 peltato-digitate tentacles, each with 12 digits increasing in size distally; tentacle rods present; lacking ossicles in body wall; calcareous ring present, 5 subrectangular, transversely elongate radial and 5 subequal, interradial plates, lacking anterior projections / teeth; single polian vesicle; madreporite canal long, straight, madreporite distant from water ring; branched gonad tubules; ciliated funnels present.

Type species. Rhabdomolgus novae-zealandiae Dendy and Hindle, 1907 ( New Zealand, Chatham Is , coastal shallows) .

Other species. Kolostoneura griffithsi sp. nov. ( Antarctica, Scotia Sea, 506 m).

Remarks. Smirnov (1998) noted that although Kolostoneura lacks ossicles in the body wall its morphological characters place it near Taeniogyrus and Trochodota and thus in family Taeniogyrinae . Mortensen (1925) found a very small, damaged specimen that he judged to be Kolostoneura novae-zealandiae (Dendy and Hindle) that was infested with parasitic snails and had hooks and wheels in the body wall. He postulated that the ossicles of the ancestral species were present through the influence of the parasite. Perhaps ossicles are typically present in small specimens of this species, and then lost as size increases as happens with many holothuroid species (such as with the apodid Taeniogyrus magnibaculus Massin and Hétérier, 2004 below). If this is the case then genus Kolostoneura would be a junior synonym of Taeniogyrus Semper, 1867 (see below).