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The Holothurian Fauna of Cook Strait, New Zealand
[Introduction]
Diagnosis: Stout, sausage-shaped holothurians, usually possessing a caudal prolongation or tail. Tentacles 15, digitate. Anal papillae, tentacle ampullae, respiratory trees present. Radial muscles in the form of double bands. Deposits commonly in the form of tables, fusiform rods, or perforated plates. Anchors sometimes occur, but wheels and sigmoid hooks do not. Phosphatic bodies often present.
The Order Molpadida is cosmopolitan, most abundant in the Indo-West Pacific, and its members have a bathymetric range from a little below low-water mark to at least 2,000 fathoms, where an almost exclusively subterranean life is led in a sandy or mud bottom. Most of the known species have been taken in deep water, and consequently, many species have a wide geographic distribution.
There are three families in Order Molpadida, of which two are represented in New Zealand waters, species from both having been taken in the Cook Strait region.
| 1 | (4) | Tentacle ampullae present. | |
| 2 | (3) | Tentacles with 1–3 pairs of digits and a terminal digit | Fam. MOLPADIIDAE |
| 3 | (2) | Tentacles with 2 pairs of digits and no terminal digit | Fam. CAUDINIDAE |
| 4 | (1) | Tentacle ampullae absent Fam. | EUPYRGIIDAE (unknown in New Zealand) |