Horned Sea Star

• It is one of the most heavily collected sea stars in the world, sold dried as a tourist souvenir, a pressure that has wiped out whole populations in South-East Asia.
• Its tubercles often house small commensal shrimps and worms that live nowhere else.
• Like all sea stars, it moves on hundreds of hydraulic tube feet driven by a system of pressurised water canals.
• Its dark conical tubercles on a pale ground give it the name chocolate chip sea star and make it unmistakable.
• It is collected in bulk for the souvenir and ornament trade: the animals are dried and sold, and that pressure has cut its populations in several areas.
• It hosts commensals on its own body, among them shrimps and scale worms that live between its tubercles.
• Like all starfish, it digests outside its body: it everts its stomach over prey or sediment and absorbs the organic matter.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - endoskeleton of calcareous plates (echinoderm)

Habitat and environment

Seagrass meadows and shallow sandy bottoms of the Indo-Pacific

Sources consulted: Linneo (1758) · Bos et al. (2008) · Smithsonian Marine Station