Red-knobbed starfish
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| Red-knobbed starfish |
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| Scientific Classification |
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| Binomial Name |
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Protoreaster linckii |
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Introduction
The Red-Knoobbed Starfish may be the most intersesting starfish in the world. Its very notisible traffic-cone-like knobs are very distingwishing. They live in the Indian Ocean and can do major damage to coral reef, but this little, harmful echinoderm is crusal to the marien food chain.
Anatomy
External
Each Red-Knobbed Starfish has at least five arms. Some have less and some have many more. The one truely amazing physical aspect is on its dorsal side. The Red-Knobbed Starfish has multiple red knobbes throughout the body. These red knobbes are connected to each other by a surfacing red cord-like,wiry material which make the starfish like a grid.[1] On the ventral side connected to the radial canals, there are thousands of little tubed feet which act like a suction cup. These hundreds of tubed feet, allow the starfish to stick to the side of rocks, and move as it likes throughout the sea. At the end of each arm there is a photorecptor eye spot. This eye spot allows the starfish to see the difference between light and dark, and detect movement of the currents of the ocean and possible preditors.[2]
Internal
The internal antomy of the Red-knobbed Starfish is the same as all other starfish types. All starfish have two stomachs, a cardiac stomach and a pyloric stomach. The cardiac stomach is at the very center of the Red-Knobbed Starfish and helps with eating mollusks like clams and mussles. Once the Red-Knobbed Starfish has a clam in its arms, it pries the mollusks shell open and release its stomach into the shell. The stomach has very strong digestive juices that kills and liquifies the animal inside the shell. Once the mollusk is dead, the stomach sucks up the animal, brings in its stomach and leaves the empty shell on the ocean floor. When the Red-Knobbed Starfish digests the mollusk, it goes to the anus to be expelled into the sea.[3]
Reproduction
All starfish become sexualy active at the age of 12- 14 months old. Like fish, starfish start mating during the months of May and June. Starfish reproduce sexualy, but the sexes are not together. This act and the fertization of the eggs is external. The female releases millions of eggs the size of one- two cm. in diameter into the sea while the male releases his sperm in to the sea also. The eggs and sperm meet, fertilization is complete and a blastula. After a short period of time, the blastula forms a cilia for swimming around the sea. Without a head or brain, the blastula can navigate through the sea and begins to familiarizes itself to its surrounding. The blastula grows bigger into a larva. The larva now has its own stomach, with the cilia as a blastula, now in the stomach can inhale food. After a few months, the larva grows to be a small starfish. In this case, a Red-Knobbed Starfish.[4]
Ecology
Most, if not all, starfish only eat mollusks. Red-Knobbed Starfish eat clams, oysters and mussels and possibly coral. In most cases, when a starfish feeds on coral, it will destroy it and end up killing it.[5] Also, a single starfish will eat a bed of mussels at one time. Although, the starfish is a food souce for many marine animals, the starfish can easily hurt parts of the marine ecosystem by eating key components.[6]
How Starfish Cool and Warm Themselvs Up
The Red-Knobbed Starfish lives in the Indian Ocean. Like the rest of the starfish in the world, it has a unique way to cool itself down. When a starfish is exposed to direct sunlight, its body temperature go up. Somehow the starfish pumps itself with salt water to bring down its body temperature. A man named Dr. Pincebourse started a study at the University of South Carolina about how starfish gained weight when exposed to sunlight. They cannot go into the ocean and goes eat something because the starfish can only move in the water. So the question came up "... how can these star fish GAIN weight...?" The study showed that when a starfish is in direct sunlight. Its body temperture goes up rapidly, but when the starfish punps its body with salt water, it increaces the body mass and there for, make its body temperature go up slower so that it will not die or suffer from heat stress. Dr. Pincebourse also discovered that since the world is getting warmer, including the oceans. The starfish population may burn themselves out because the air and the oceans are going to get warmer and a starfish cannot pump cold salt water into its body.[7]
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References
- Oreasteridae by Wikispecies.
- Red-knobbed Starfish by Burgess Atlas.
- Starfish by New World Encyclopedia
- Echinoderms by A Review of the Universe - Structures, Evolutions, Observations, and Theories
- Echinoderms by Wikipedia
- Starfish 'pump up' to cool down by BBC Earth News
- [p475] Thomas E. Porch by BJU PRESS.
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