Type species: Paramaretia multituberculata Mrtsn.

The genus has already been reported from New Zealand on the basis of the type species (Fell, 1958). The second, and only other known species has, however, been taken on a number of occasions from southern New Zealand; it has not hitherto been reported as the poor quality of the material, together with the lack of detailed information on variation limits in the Australian specimens, made it difficult to decide whether or not the New Zealand material is identical with that from Australia. Other specimens now available suggest that no real differences exist between the New Zealand and Australian representatives of the genus, and that therefore all local specimens are to be referred to one or other of the described Australian species. They may be separated by the following key:

Paramaretia multituberculata Mortensen, 1950

Illustrations of this species, based on Chatham Islands material, have already been published (Fell, 1960, Plate 10). About 30 specimens are known, mainly from 280–600m, off the Chatham Islands. It is as yet unknown from Otago-Southland where, however, the second species occurs rather rarely, on shelf stations.

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.