Starfish

I will be focusing my research on starfish that live in coral reefs. One interesting type of starfish is the crown-of-thorns starfish. Its population has recently expanded which has harmed coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific. It is a very unusual organism. It grows to be about 40cm in diameter and can have from 8 to 21 arms. It is covered in poisonous spines, and its color patterns can be a wide range of possibilities. It is a threat to coral reefs because it consumes the living tissue of corals and leaves behind only the bleached skeleton. These starfish come from deeper waters and move to coral reefs in order to feed. When they are done they leave as quickly as they came leaving only the dead reef behind.

For a more extensive report on this type of starfish please visit http://www.eoearth.org/article/Crown-of-thorn_sea_star?topic=49513

References:

Sheppard, Charles, Simon K. Davy, and Graham M. Pilling. The Biology of Coral Reefs. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.