The orange-footed sea cucumber (''Cucumaria frondosa'') is the largest

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 ...

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...

, United States. It is one of the most abundant and widespread species of holothurians within the North Atlantic Ocean and the

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; no, Barentshavet, ; russian: Баренцево море, Barentsevo More) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territo ...

(Russia), being most abundant along the eastern coast of North America.Jordan, A.J. 1972. On the ecology and behavior of ''Cucumaria frondosa'' (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) at Lamoine Beach, Maine. Ph.D. thesis, Department of Biology, The University of Maine, Orono, M.E. 74 pp.

Description

These sea cucumbers reach around in length and have ten branched oral tentacles ranging in colour from orange to black. This species has a football shape with a leathery skin ranging in colour from yellowish white to dark brownish-black and is covered with five rows of retractile tube feet.Gosner, K.L. 1978. This species of Sea Cucumber can move about two feet per day. It is able to accomplish this task by the movement of its stomach wall muscles. Peterson field guides: Atlantic seashore. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.Jordan, A. J. 1972. On the ecology and behaviour of ''Cucumaria frondosa'' (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea at Lamoine Beach, Maine. Ph.D. thesis, University of Maine and Orono, Orono. United States. The young are about 1 mm to 6 mm long and are translucent orange and pink. Three of these bands of tube feet are found on bottom whereas the top rows are often reduced. Adults of ''C. frondosa'' have a reduced numbers of spicules (skeletal structures) shaped like rounded plates with many holes.Levin, V. S., and Gudimova, E. N. 2000. Taxonomic interrelations of holothurians ''Cucumaria frondosa'' and ''C. japonica'' (Dendrochirotida, Cucumariidae). S.P.C. Beche-de-mer Inf. Bull. 13: 22-29. The sexes can be identified by the conspicuous tube-shaped (female) or heart-shaped (male) gonopore located under the crown of oral tentacles.

Habitat

Their habitat is rocks, crevices or low-tide

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...

water. They are known to cover vast areas of the substrate at depths of less than 30 meters (100 ft).

Feeding

The sea cucumber has modified its oral

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 ...

to form tentacles surrounding its mouth which are retracted when disturbed or bringing food into its mouth. The tentacles are displayed in a ring form with ten individual tentacles that are each highly branched looking treelike. Most sea cucumbers are deposit feeders but ''Cucumaria frondosa'' are a suspension feeding organism where they catch available particles in the ocean on their tentacles. Sea cucumbers were tested in the Atlantic Ocean to see if there was seasonality to the feeding of cucumbers. Specifically ''C. frondosa'' were shown to have this feeding adaptation, and feed only in the spring (March to April) when the day length, water temperature, and chlorophyll concentration began to increase. A combination of these environmental cues is accountable for the feeding of ''C. frondosa'' because just one of them is not enough to trigger the animal to start eating. The chlorophyll concentration increases during this time due to a

phytoplankton Phytoplankton () are the autotrophic (self-feeding) components of the plankton community and a key part of ocean and freshwater ecosystems. The name comes from the Greek words (), meaning 'plant', and (), meaning 'wanderer' or 'drifter'. Ph ...

bloom season and larger amount of primary production. The cucumber does not eat through the colder seasons and will start back up again in the spring.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2491419 Cucumariidae Fauna of the Arctic Ocean Fauna of the Atlantic Ocean Fauna of the Pacific Ocean Animals described in 1767 Taxa named by Johan Ernst Gunnerus