Sea stars and their relatives eat, breathe and scuttle around the seafloor with tiny tube feet. Now researchers have gotten their first-ever look at similar tentacle-like structures in an extinct ...

The recent Invertebrate Wars reminded me of spectacular, but often ignored, group of gastropods. The parasites! This is a group that I have totally geeked out on in the past. In my previous work I ...

The rates of oxygen consumption by embryos of antarctic echinoderms (Acodontaster hodgsoni, Odontaster validus. Psilaster charcoti, and Sterechinus neumayeri) were compared to the biomass (ash-free ...

The evolution of the sea star, sea urchin, and other echinoderms’ body shape during the Cambrian and Ordovician periods was faster and more dramatic than their ecological innovation, according to a ...

Imagine you are drawing a starfish—where would you draw its face? Starfish have eyes at the tip of each of their arms, but the location of their heads has puzzled scientists for decades.

The conservation of genome regulatory elements over long periods of evolution is not limited to vertebrates, as previously thought, but also in echinoderms (invertebrates). This is one of the most ...

This exercise illustrates the two major features that all members of the Phylum Echinodermata have in common - the water vascular system and pentaradial symmetry. The take home message is that all ...

Echinoderms are one of the most highly derived groups of animals with many species as significant components of several marine communities. They’re classified by three fundamental shared ...

The impact on levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere by the decaying remains of a group of marine creatures that includes starfish and sea urchin has been significantly underestimated. The ...