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RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)
Contents Vol 37(11)

Hidden in plain sight: Tripneustes kermadecensis (Echinodermata: Echinoidea) is a junior synonym of the eastern Australian sea urchin Evechinus australiae described in 1878

Emily McLaren https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8007-2415 A * , Omri Bronstein https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2620-3976 B C , Andreas Kroh https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8566-8848 D , Viola Winkler https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5307-3420 E , Ashley Miskelly F , Brigitte Sommer https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0617-7790 A and Maria Byrne https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8902-9808 A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Coastal and Marine Ecosystems Group, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2050, Australia. Email: brigitte.sommer@sydney.edu.au; maria.byrne@sydney.edu.au

B Tel Aviv University, Faculty of Life Sciences, School of Zoology, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel. Email: bronstein@tauex.tau.ac.il

C Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv, Israel.

D Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Burgring 7, AT-1010 Vienna, Austria. Email: andreas.kroh@nhm.at

E Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Central Research Laboratories, Burgring 7, AT-1010 Vienna, Austria. Email: viola.winkler@nhm.at

F The Sea Urchin Science Centre and Gallery, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

* Correspondence to: emily.mclaren@sydney.edu.au

Handling Editor: Greg Rouse

Invertebrate Systematics 37(11) 741-754 https://doi.org/10.1071/IS23038
Submitted: 18 July 2023  Accepted: 4 October 2023  Published: 31 October 2023

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Accurate taxonomy and descriptions of species are key to understanding biodiversity. The echinoid genus Tripneustes is an ecologically and commercially important taxon that includes the tropical Tripneustes gratilla gratilla and the recently described T. kermadecensis from Australia and New Zealand. While examining the Australian Museum collections to clarify the distributions of these two species in eastern Australia we found potential senior type material for T. kermadecensis. These specimens from Sydney Harbour were originally described in 1878 as Evechinus australiae by Tenison-Woods but neither illustrated nor redescribed in any subsequent report. We undertook molecular and morphological analysis of these specimens to determine whether T. kermadecensis and E. australiae represent two distinct taxa or not. This included micro-computed tomography, quantification of test traits and molecular genetic analysis. The COI sequence and morphology of Evechinus australiae matched that of Tripneustes kermadecensis. As such, T. kermadecensis is a junior synonym of Evechinus australiae. The correct designation of this taxon is therefore Tripneustes australiae (Tenison-Woods, 1878).

ZooBank: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:9B9E685C‐9C1C‐4645‐A799‐D97969BAA033

Keywords: Australia, Echinodermata, Echinoidea, integrative taxonomy, molecular taxonomy, morphology, taxonomy, Tripneustes.

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