Snot sea cucumber
Leptosynapta dolabrifera, the snot sea cucumber, is a small sea cucumber under the class Holothuroidea (1), in the family Synaptidae. It is most closely related to another species in its genus of 34 species Leptosynapta known as Leptosynapta inhaerens.
Snot sea cucumbers come in varying shapes and sizes, with lengths from 1.9 to 3.5 in (50-90mm). The sea cucumber has small circular armored spines on its side to help in anchoring the creature and helping it to bury in the seafloor. Two to three toothed arms help to anchor and to extract nutrients from the substrate. There are no variations by sex (2). They are chubby with a pink, purple, red or white body and they are often covered in mucus. The thickness and length of the Leptopsynapta dolabrifera can vary with the amount of body wall muscle. Many light-colored snot sea cucumbers have translucent body walls (8)
Leptosynapta dolabrifera has been known to inhabit areas around the coasts of Australia (3), and have also been recorded in Portland, Oregon (4) and some areas of Scotland in recent years. It prefers to inhabit temperate, shallow waters. Recent studies reveal that the average density of L. dolabrifera in an area is 0.20 (4). The sea snot cucumber is a favorite food of the Eastern shovelnose stingaree, making up 4.7% of their diet (5). L. dolabrifera is not thought to be endangered as of 2021.
The habitat L. dolabrifera lives in consists of nutrient rich substrate, either silty and fine substrate for shallow areas and dark, clay-like substrates for deeper waters (6). Sometimes, L. dolabrifera is seen in rockier areas, such as in coral skeletons in Edinburgh, Scotland (7).
Like most other sea cucumbers, snot sea cucumbers burrow themselves in sand or mud, and extracts nutrients with their tentacles. Their diet consists entirely of the substrates it consumes via digging into the sands and pushing substrate into its mouth with its anchors, leaving discarded trails of sand as waste behind.
