Shallow water Holothurians known from the Caribbean waters

The most important contribution to our knowledge about the holothurian fauna of the islands along the coast of northern South America is ENGEL’S brief report of 1939, based on Dr. WAGENAAR HUMMELINCK and earlier workers collections, up to the year 1936. His list comprises 13 species, of which all except Pentacta pygmaea (Théel) are included in HUMMELINCK’S recent collections, which furthermore adds four more species. This expanded list is almost identical with that which recently has been compiled for the Puerto Rican waters, and with the inclusion of a few more species known from Surinam, Trinidad and Jamaica, etc., it looks as if now one has a fairly complete list of all the shallow water holothurians which occur in the Caribbean region. After the identification of HUMMELINCK’S new material had been completed, Mr. ELISHA S. TIKASINGH (1963) has produced a more extensive report on ‘The shallow water Holothurians of Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire’, which will be of much help to the students of holothurians in the southern part of the Caribbean.