However, the animal was identified as a basket star, which belongs to an echinoderm group known as
brittle stars, with a disk-shaped body and five flexible arms.
Scientists have found that green
brittle stars with five arms show a different "pumping" movement pattern than those with six arms.
These are the photos of
brittle star taken in the south of Qatar at the Golden beach, Sealine.
For several hundred benthos (seabed-dwelling) species such as worms, amphipods, shells,
brittle stars, and so on, DNA barcodes will be developed.
Brittle stars (class Ophiuroidea) with ancestral indirect development go through the swimming, feeding ophiopluteus larva stage (MacBride, 1907; Mortensen, 1921, 1931, 1937, 1938; Narasimhamurti, 1933; Olsen, 1942; Hendler, 1975; Rumrill, 1984; Mladenov, 1985; Yamashita, 1985).
Echinoderms are the ancient ancestors of modern animals like starfish, sea urchins,
brittle stars, feather stars, sea lilies and sea cucumbers.
New records of
brittle stars from French Guiana: Ophiactis savignyi and the alien species Ophiothela mirabilis (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea).
The researchers examined preserved samples of bottom-dwelling starfish and
brittle stars collected from the trench over the past four decades to assess the extent of synthetic particles they had ingested.
Without these astonishing submerged landscapes there simply wouldn't be any fish, let alone fantastic jewel anemones, seahorses, dolphins,
brittle stars among all the other wild and extraordinary creatures which are part of a healthy marine ecosystem."
Regarding ophiuroids (
brittle stars), and their natural metabolite, an investigation has been conducted which compared them with other echinoderms.
Caption: Glass sponges, which provide habitat for feather and
brittle stars in frigid Antarctic waters, flourished following the collapse of the Larsen A ice shelf.
I think it was too much white and brown, and not enough color on the corals and
brittle stars. Once we were close enough to zoom in on a few colonies, there was no doubt that this was something I had not seen anywhere else in the Gulf: an abundance of stressed corals, showing clear signs of a recent impact.
brittle star - an animal resembling a starfish with fragile whiplike arms radiating from a small central disc