''Apostichopus parvimensis'', commonly known as the warty sea cucumber, is a Pacific species of

sea cucumber Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class Holothuroidea (). They are marine animals with a leathery skin and an elongated body containing a single, branched gonad. Sea cucumbers are found on the sea floor worldwide. The number of holothuria ...

that can be found from the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico, to

Monterey Bay Monterey Bay is a bay of the Pacific Ocean located on the coast of the U.S. state of California, south of the San Francisco Bay Area and its major city at the south of the bay, San Jose. San Francisco itself is further north along the coast, by a ...

, California, USA, although only scattered individuals were reported to occur north of

Point Conception Point Conception (Chumash: ''Humqaq'') is a headland along the Gaviota Coast in southwestern Santa Barbara County, California. It is the point where the Santa Barbara Channel meets the Pacific Ocean, and as the corner between the mostly north-s ...

, California.Chávez, E. a., De Lourdes Salgado-Rogel, M. a., & Palleiro-Nayar, J. (2011). Stock assessment of the warty sea cucumber fishery (Parastichopus parvimensis) of NW Baja California. California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Reports, 52, 136–147. It is found mainly in low energy environments from the intertidal zone down to ,Bruckner A. W. 2006. Sea cucumber population status, fisheries and trade in the United States. In: Proceedings of the CITES workshop on the conservation of the sea cucumber in the families Holothuriidae and Stichopodidae. A. W. Brucker (Ed), NOAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-OPR-34, USA, pp. 192–202 but can occur as deep as .

Physical description

The warty sea cucumber can reach a maximum length of . It has a soft, cylindrical body, with red-brown to yellowish leathery skin. There are numerous grey spots along its body, hence the name "warty." It has an

endoskeleton An endoskeleton (From Greek ἔνδον, éndon = "within", "inner" + σκελετός, skeletos = "skeleton") is an internal support structure of an animal, composed of mineralized tissue. Overview An endoskeleton is a skeleton that is on the i ...

just below the skin. The mouth and anus are on opposite sides of the body. The mouth is surrounded by ten retractable

tentacle In zoology, a tentacle is a flexible, mobile, and elongated organ present in some species of animals, most of them invertebrates. In animal anatomy, tentacles usually occur in one or more pairs. Anatomically, the tentacles of animals work main ...

s that are used to bring food in. Five rows of

tube feet Tube feet (technically podia) are small active tubular projections on the oral face of an echinoderm, whether the arms of a starfish, or the undersides of sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumbers; they are more discreet though present on britt ...

extend from the mouth to the anus.

Behavior and reproduction

''Apostichopus parvimensis'' is a solitary nocturnal animal. When threatened, it can expel its internal organs through its anus and grow new ones. These sea cucumbers have separate sexes, and

egg An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...

s are fertilized externally. Spawning usually takes place in November, and each female can produce thousands of eggs. After fertilization, a larva is formed which metamorphoses into a sea cucumber after a few weeks.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2491216 Stichopodidae Animals described in 1913 Taxa named by Hubert Lyman Clark