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The Spatangid Echinoids of New Zealand

Paramaretia peloria (H. L. Clark, 1916). Plate 6

Paramaretia peloria (H. L. Clark, 1916). Plate 6 .

Specimens now referred to this species were taken from near Taiaroa Heads by a party of Victoria University students, led by Dr Patricia M. Ralph. The material was fragmentary, and the one nearly entire specimen (Plate 6) showed a partial internal fasciole near the apical system, a character which seemed to remove the species from the Spatangidae and to place it in the Loveniidae. However, material sent recently by Mrs Beryl Nielsen from Foveaux Strait shows that the internal fasciole is inconstant, or disappears before maturity. Thus it may be compared with the fate of the subanal fasciole which, as Mortensen (1951) showed, may disappear in Paramaretia multituberculata (the same is known to occur in Spatangus raschi). It is evident that in the Australian holotype the internal fasciole had failed to develop, or had disappeared, as in the Foveaux Strait material recently examined. There is therefore no longer any doubt as to the status of the New Zealand specimens, which may be recorded formally. The characters of the species are indicated in the photographs here given, and these may be compared with those cited above for the other species of the genus.

There is a pronounced difference in colour between the species. Whereas multituberculata is a deep reddish-purple, peloria is a greyish fawn; there is little difference in maximum size, the largest known specimens of both species reaching a length of ca. 120mm.

P. peloria ranges the south-eastern and southern coasts of the South Island, in 30–75m. It is apparently nowhere common. Specimens from Foveaux Strait are in the Dominion Museum, and fragments are represented in various N.Z. Oceanographic Institute samples not yet examined in detail nor reported upon.