François Michonneau

A new paper with our Japanese colleagues was recently published in the Biological Magazine of Okinawa. It’s the first records of Holothuria nigralutea after its original description from Western Australia. In this paper we also report that it lives on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It seems to me that these observations suggest that this species is much more widespread than we think. In most places, it probably lives too deep to be noticed by SCUBA divers though…

You can download the paper here.

This paper is also the occasion to give the species its common Japanese name: the éclair sea cucumber. Look for the figure in the paper .

I also wrote a couple of posts a few months ago concerning this species and why we are studying it in more details.

Holothuria nigralutea. Okinawa. 45m. Dorsal side.

I just found this podcast about sea cucumbers on the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) website. It provides a nice, short and fun introduction to these wonderful animals: http://education.eol.org/podcast/sea-cucumber.

Have a look at this video showing Stichopus herrmanni releasing its gametes. This event was captured by Emmanuel Tardy in New Caledonia.