Sea Cucumbers - Scientific Art Reproduction - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Engraving reproduction of: Holothuries

Original title Thuroidea - Gurkensterne

Sporadipus poster - Sea cucumbers of the class Sea Cucumbers or Holothurias (Thuroidea or Holothurioidea)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Phylum Echinoderms (Echinoderma)
Main class of Monorchonia
Class of Holothurians or Sea Cucumbers (Thuroidea or Holothuria).

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Thuroidea - Holothuries :

Sea cucumbers (also called sea cucumbers or sea sausages, Holothurioidea or Thuroidea) are, among the five living classes of echinoderms, those closest to the common ancestral group of the entire phylum of echinoderms (the Amphoridea or primitive starfish); like the latter, they have only one pair of gonads, while the other four living classes have five pairs. Externally, too, the characteristic pentaradiate structure of the echinoderm body is less pronounced in sea cucumbers; they look more like a snake or a worm; others look more like a cylinder or a cucumber. The body is elongated, very muscular, therefore capable of strong contractions and extensions. Numerous mobile podia emerge from the skin, sometimes arranged regularly in five longitudinal bands, sometimes scattered irregularly over the entire surface (Figs. 1 and 2). At the posterior end of the elongated body is the anus, at the anterior end the mouth, surrounded by a crown of tentacles. These tentacles or prehensile arms are either branched in a tree-like manner (Fig. 1) or shield-like (Fig. 2). In the thick, leathery skin of the sea cucumbers are scattered masses of microscopic calcareous corpuscles, which have a very elegant and varied form (Fig. 8-22). — From the eggs of sea cucumbers do not develop directly the pentaradiate animals, but bilaterally symmetrical larvae (auricularia, Figs. 3 and 4); these are transformed into adult and sexually mature thuroides only by a very remarkable metamorphosis (Figs. 5 and 6).

Species present on the Holothuries - Sporadipus naturalist board :

• Phyllophorus urna
• Sporadipus botellus
• Synapta digitata
• Stichopus murrayi
• Myriotrochus rinkii
• Caudina coriacea
• Paelopatides aspera
• Elpidia rigida
• Synapta aculeata
• Synapta glabra
• Colochirus inornatus
• Stichopus moebii
• Chirodota venusta
• Cucumaria crucifera
• Thelenota atra
• Arbacia pustulosa