Cushion sea star - Culcita schmideliana
Cushion sea star, Culcita schmideliana, commonly known as the spiny cushion star, is a species of pin-cushion star which looks more like a hedgehog without its spines than the starfish we generally know. It has a variety of base colors and often patches of a different color. It is pentagonal in shape and lives in the tropical Indo-Pacific.
This species is rarely kept by hobby aquarists. Culcita schmideliana is a roughly pentagonal starfish with a leathery surface and an inflated appearance. It is subglobose in shape when fully adult, with a very convex aboral (upper) surface and flat base. stella cuscino culcita schmideliana
The aboral surface is scattered with small conical spines (that supposedly never enter the papular zones and the oral (under) surface has small granulations and is clad in large conical tubercles, those nearest the ambulacral grooves and the margin being ovate in cross section and the largest. This starfish varies in color but often has a greyish background with small pink patches mostly adjacent to black tubercles.
The madreporite is usually an orangeish color. This starfish often has several commensal animals in its body cavity or on its surface. A carapid fish is usually to be found living in its stomach and sometimes the polychaete worm Gastrolepidia clavigera crawls over its surface. There is also often a tiny commersal shrimp Periclimenes soror hiding almost invisibly on its aboral surface.
Culcita schmideliana is native to the tropical western Indo-Pacific. Its range extends from Madagascar, the East African coast and the Red Sea to Aldabra, Chagos, Philippines Islands, the Seychelles, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Australia. It is found in lagoon areas and on inner reef flats with seagrasses and among algae at depths down to about 92 m. Culcita schmideliana feeds mainly on the epibenthic film of organic detritus and micro-organisms growing on algae and sea grasses.
(extract from Wikipedia)
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