Pseudocnus Panning, 1949

Thandar, Ahmed S., Zettler, Michael L. & Arumugam, Preyan, 2010, Additions to the sea cucumber fauna of Namibia and Angola, with descriptions of new taxa (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea), Zootaxa 2655, pp. 1-24 : 17

Genus Pseudocnus Panning, 1949

Diagnosis (after Panning 1949, modified herein). Small, barrel-shaped species. Tentacles 10, more or less of equal size or ventral two reduced. Calcareous ring simple, without posterior processes. Interambulacra usually naked. Body wall ossicles fir-cone shaped knobbed plates made up of a single layer of calcareous material; baskets absent.

Remarks. Panning (1949, 1952, 1962) included numerous species in this genus which he characterised as having fir-cone shaped knobbed plates and a deeper layer of knobbed button-like deposits. In 1962 he designated Cucumaria dubiosa Semper as type species. Thandar (1987) separated three southern African forms with interradial papillae, equal tentacles and an external layer of incomplete baskets (forked rods), assembling them, together with Pseudocnus syracusanus (Grube) from the Mediterranean, in the genus Pseudocnella erected for this purpose. Thandar further suggested that Pseudocnus should be restricted to forms without interradial papillae, no external layer of baskets of any sort and body wall ossicles comprising knobbed plates made up of a single layer of calcareous material as characterised by the type species. Hence, the diagnosis of Pseudocnus is here modified.