Actinopyga crassa Panning 1944

Actinopyga crassa Panning, 1944 Figure 4 Actinopyga echinites crassa Panning, 1944: 51, text-fig. 19; Rowe & Gates, 1995: 286 (cited as a synonym of A. echinites (Jaeger, 1833). Actinopyga crassa Rowe, 1969: 131 (passim); Clark & Rowe, 1971: 176 (dist.); Cherbonnier, 1988: 24, fig. 6A–Q; Samyn & Tallon, 2005 (distribution). Diagnosis (after Panning 1944). A medium-sized species of Actinopyga up to 145 mm long. Colour yellow to greyish brown, darker in the middle. Tube feet in three distinct bands ventrally, a few also in the interambulacra; papillae scattered dorsally. Dorsal body wall with minute, elongate, branched, rosette-like, X-shaped, dichotomously branched rods (up to 46 µm long); ventral body wall with rosette-like rods (up to 62 µm long), aggregated into heaps, amongst thick, curved, elongate rods (up to 95 µm long), branched only at ends. Material examined. Park Rynie, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, intertidal, rocky shore, 1 spec. General distribution. Red Sea, Querimba Archipelago (northern Mozambique), KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa); Madagascar, New Guinea, New Caledonia, Remarks. The first record of this species from southern Africa is that of Panning (1944) but from Querimba Archipelago, off northern Mozambique. The specimen here illustrated originates from Park Rynie in southern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and is thus the first record of the species from south of the tropic of Capricorn. Its dorsal ossicles, according to Panning (1944), are similar to those of A. echinites. However, it differs from the latter species and others in the genus by its characteristically curved ventral rods with complicated terminal ramifications and the absence of any spiny rosettes of the type found in A. echinites (see Thandar 2022).