ABSTRACT
The holothuroid family Holothuriidae comprises approximately 140 species of mostly large, shallow-water, tropical-subtropical sea cucumbers. Three genera and about 35 species are known from southern Africa (south of the tropic of Capricorn), with the largest genus Holothuria represented by 11 of the 19 known subgenera. All of Deichmann’s (1958) ecological subdivisions occur, but cladistic relationships, based on character divergence in the form and combination of body wall deposits, appear to support Rowe’s (1969) contention that rock-clinging surf-zone species are the most primitive and from which later evolved fugitive or partly concealed species leading to those with fossorial or burrowing/digging habits. However, not all rock-clinging surf-zone species are of necessity primitive since those with reduced tables, like Holothuria (Selenkothuria) moebii and H. (S.) parva, are perhaps descendants of those forms in which complete tables are characteristic of the body wall.
