Chiridota Eschscholtz, 1829

Pawson, David L. & Vance, Doris J., 2004, Chiridota heheva, new species, from Western Atlantic deep­sea cold seeps and anthropogenic habitats (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea: Apodida), Zootaxa 534, pp. 1-12 : 2

Genus Chiridota Eschscholtz, 1829

Diagnosis: Tentacles 12. Ossicles in body wall wheels gathered into papillae. Polian vesicles 3–20 (After Smirnov, 1998).

Type Species: Chiridota discolor Eschscholtz, 1829 .

Remarks: Early in 1984, Dr. Barbara Hecker of the Lamont­Doherty Geological Observatory, New York, sent to DLP for study two specimens of a Chiridota that she had collected on DSRV Alvin dive 1343, at a cold seep on the Florida Escarpment in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. At the time, DLP determined these specimens as “ Chiridota sp.” ( Hecker, 1985), but was uncertain about the species­level identification. Some years later, in 1990, Dr. Charles E. Hedendorf, Ohio State University, sent DLP several specimens of the same species that had been collected from the wreck of the SS Central America, which sunk in a hurricane in 1859, approximately 395 kilometers due east of Savannah, Georgia ( Herdendorf et al., 1995). Then, between 2000 and 2003, we received some additional specimens from Dr. Cindy Lee Van Dover of the College of William and Mary; these she had collected on further Alvin dives ( Van Dover et al., 2003) at the Florida Escarpment cold seep site, and at the Blake Ridge, east of Savannah, Georgia, not far from the site of the Central America wreck. All of this material belongs to a new species, which is described here.