Psychropotes verrucicaudatus Xiao, Gong, Kou, Li, 2019

Bribiesca-Contreras, Guadalupe, Dahlgren, Thomas G., Amon, Diva J., Cairns, Stephen, Drennan, Regan, Durden, Jennifer M., Eleaume, Marc P., Hosie, Andrew M., Kremenetskaia, Antonina, McQuaid, Kirsty, O'Hara, Timothy D., Rabone, Muriel, Simon-Lledo, Erik, Smith, Craig R., Watling, Les, Wiklund, Helena & Glover, Adrian G., 2022, Benthic megafauna of the western Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Pacific Ocean, ZooKeys 1113, pp. 1-110 : 1

Psychropotes verrucicaudatus Xiao, Gong, Kou, Li, 2019

Fig. 42

Material.

Clarion-Clipperton Zone • 1 specimen; APEI 4; 6.9878°N, 149.9119°W; 4999 m deep; 02 Jun. 2018; Smith & Durden leg.; GenBank: ON400703 (COI); NHMUK 2021.19; Voucher code: CCZ_086 .

Description.

Single specimen, colouration in situ is violet (Fig. 42A, B ). Body elongated and anteriorly depressed (L = 34.7 cm, W = 10.2 mm); with a broad brim. Short (approx. one twelfth of body length), conical, single-pointed, dorsal unpaired appendage, placed 2/5 of the body length from the posterior end (Fig. 42A-C ). Dorsal skin, including the dorsal appendage, covered in warts (Fig. 42C, F ). Each wart has an ossicle in the centre, a giant cross with a central apophysis and strongly curved arms, all visible through the skin (Fig. 42E, F ). Dorsal skin also contains smaller crosses with spiny arms (Fig. 42E, F ). Approximately 30 pairs of mid-ventral tube feet arranged in two rows along the mid-ventral ambulacrum, arranged very close together on the anterior two thirds of the body, and scattered after posteriorly, with the last pairs being very close together again. Colouration of preserved specimen is also purple, with slightly lighter ventrum.

Remarks.

COI sequence is very similar (K2P distance = 0.77%) to the holotype of P. verrucicaudatus , and they were recovered together in the phylogenetic tree (Fig. 34 ). This species was described from the Jiaolong seamount, in the South China Sea, western Pacific Ocean at 3615 m deep ( Xiao et al. 2019). External morphological characters are in accordance with the original description.

Ecology.

The specimen was found on the sedimented abyssal plain in APEI 4 at 4999 m depth.

Comparison with image-based catalogue.

A very similar Psychropotes sp. morphotype (i.e., Psychropotes verrucicaudatus sp. inc., HOL_045) has been commonly encountered in seabed image surveys conducted across nodule fields areas of the eastern CCZ (e.g., Amon et al. 2017b), but not in the abyssal areas surveyed within the Kiribati EEZ.

Figures

Figure 34. Phylogenetic tree of the class Holothuroidea. Concatenated (12 S, 16 S, 18 S, 28 S, COI, and H 3) median consensus BEAST tree with posterior probability (PP) and bootstrap (BS) values indicated. Only values of PP> 0.70 and BS> 50 are shown, with values of PP> 0.95 and BS> 90 indicated with a circle. Nodes not recovered on the RAxML tree are indicated with a hyphen. Sequences generated in this study are highlighted in violet.

Figure 42. Psychropotes verrucicaudatus Xiao, Gong, Kou, Li, 2019. Specimen CCZ _ 086: A, B in situ images C dorsal view of specimen before preservation D ventral view E dorsal ossicles F detail of warts and ossicles on dorsal body wall G mouth tentacles. Scale bars: 5 cm (B); 2 cm (C, D); 100 μm (E). Image attribution: Durden and Smith (A, B); Wiklund, Durden, Drennan, and McQuaid (C, D); Bribiesca-Contreras (E-G).