Sea cucumbers and their extracts have gained immense popularity and interest among researchers and nutritionists due to their nutritive value, potential health benefits, and use in the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases. Many areas of the world use sea cucumbers in traditional foods and folk medicine. Though the actual components and their specific functions still remain to be investiga...

Echinoderms (sea urchins, sea stars, brittle stars, sea lilies and sea cucumbers) are a group of diverse organisms, second in number within deuterostome species to only the chordates. Echinoderms serve as excellent model systems for developmental biology due to their diverse developmental mechanisms, tractable laboratory use, and close phylogenetic distance to chordates. In addition, echinoderm...

Sea cucumbers are important resources for coastal livelihoods and ecosystems. At least 60 species are fished from more than 40 countries and most of the harvests are processed then exported to Asian markets. Sea cucumbers generally appear to have slow rates of population turnover and are easily harvested in shallow waters in the tropics. With retail prices of up to USD300–500 per kg (dried), ex...

Recently collected material from Australia, Japan and Guam allowed us to revise Phyrella and describe Phyrella mookiei sp. nov. We redefine the genus based on combined morphological and molecular analyses. Phyrella unlike most dendrochirotids eviscerate posteriorly. The number of tentacles is variable (14-20), as is the degree of fragmentation of the calcareous ring, calling into question the s...

The case put by Alexey Smirnov in 2012 is accepted and the order name Synaptida Cuénot is adopted in place of Apodida Brandt. Two new Myriotrochidae Théel species from the continental slope of Australia are described: Prototrochus robbinsae sp. nov. and Prototrochus roniae sp. nov.  A key to the six Australasian species of Prototrochus Beljaev & Mironov and a distribution and depth map are prov...

Late in 1964, one of us (D.L.P') received from Professor V. V. Hickman in Tasmania a specimen of a new synaptid holothurian from that island. Professor Hickman had prepared permanent mounts of representative calcareous deposits of the specimen, and very kindly offered all of his ma,terial of the species to D.L.P. for inclusion ina report on the apodous holothurians of the Australian Museum whic...