Constellations

I did a quick search, and there doesn’t seem to be a collective noun for sea stars. I’m going to remedy that by declaring “constellation” to be the official term for a group of sea stars. And by “official” I mean that’s the term I’m going to use. Who knows, maybe it’ll take.

In any case, I certainly have a constellation of sea star larvae in each of my jars. Today I pipetted a lot of them into a bowl, and they look pretty cool all swimming together, like strange alien spaceships. What do you think?

The largest of the larvae are over 2 mm long now, and the brachiolar arms have grown much longer. They have three adhesive papillae on the ventral side of the anterior projection and well-formed juvenile rudiments, where the water vascular system is forming. They’re much too big to fit under the compound scope, so the only way to get pictures of the entire body is through the dissecting scope:

In the above photo you are looking at the larva’s ventral surface, so the animal’s left side on the right side of the photo, and vice versa. If you squint you might be able to convince yourself that you see a small whitish bleb on the left side of the stomach; that’s the rudiment. Since it doesn’t make much sense under this magnification, I removed this individual to a slide and put it under the compound scope. It doesn’t fit in the field of view, so I took pictures of each half of the body. If I were clever with photo editing software I’d be able to mesh these photos into a single image. Alas….

This gives you a better view of the juvenile rudiment on the animal’s left. Those three roundish blobs are tube feet! I think it’s likely that at some point in the not-too-distant future the larvae will be competent, which means they’d be physiologically and anatomically capable of metamorphosis. It seems to me that they are still developing very quickly, and with seawater temperatures consistent at 15-16°C I don’t expect that to change. So far, so good!

Edit 4 July 2015:  Look at what my online friend Becca can do! She was able to merge my photos into a single image. Now you can see the entire body! Thanks, Becca!