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Ophiocoma wendtii

 

 
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Ophiocoma wendtii
 
 
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The brittle star
Brittle star

Brittle stars, or Ophiuroidea, are echinoderms, closely related to sea stars. They crawl across the seafloor using their flexible arms for locomotion....
 Ophiocoma wendtii inhabits coral reef
Coral reef

Coral reefs are aragonite structures produced by living organisms. In most reefs the predominant organisms are colonial cnidarian that secrete an exoskeleton of calcium carbonate....
s from Bermuda
Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, it is situated around 1770 kilometres northeast of Miami, Florida, and 1350 kilometres south of Halifax Regional Municipality, Canada....
 to Brazil
Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the List of countries by population country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world....
. It is known for its advanced compound eyes.

Brittle stars have long, thin arms emanating from a small, disk-shaped body and are about the size of an outstretched human hand. They belong to the phylum of echinoderm
Echinoderm

Echinoderms are a Phylum of Marine animals . Echinoderms are found at every ocean depth, from the intertidal zone to the abyssal zone.Aside from the problematic Arkarua, the first definitive members of the phylum appeared near the start of the Cambrian period....
s, which includes sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and sea stars.
arms are covered with calcite
Calcite

Calcite is a Carbonate minerals and the most stable Polymorphism of calcium carbonate . The other polymorphs are the minerals aragonite and vaterite....
 crystals.






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The brittle star
Brittle star

Brittle stars, or Ophiuroidea, are echinoderms, closely related to sea stars. They crawl across the seafloor using their flexible arms for locomotion....
 Ophiocoma wendtii inhabits coral reef
Coral reef

Coral reefs are aragonite structures produced by living organisms. In most reefs the predominant organisms are colonial cnidarian that secrete an exoskeleton of calcium carbonate....
s from Bermuda
Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, it is situated around 1770 kilometres northeast of Miami, Florida, and 1350 kilometres south of Halifax Regional Municipality, Canada....
 to Brazil
Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the List of countries by population country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world....
. It is known for its advanced compound eyes.

Brittle stars have long, thin arms emanating from a small, disk-shaped body and are about the size of an outstretched human hand. They belong to the phylum of echinoderm
Echinoderm

Echinoderms are a Phylum of Marine animals . Echinoderms are found at every ocean depth, from the intertidal zone to the abyssal zone.Aside from the problematic Arkarua, the first definitive members of the phylum appeared near the start of the Cambrian period....
s, which includes sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and sea stars.

Visual system

Its arms are covered with calcite
Calcite

Calcite is a Carbonate minerals and the most stable Polymorphism of calcium carbonate . The other polymorphs are the minerals aragonite and vaterite....
 crystals. In addition to functioning as an armor and giving structural support, the crystals make up its unique visual systems. They minimize spherical aberration and can detect the direction of incoming light. The lenses work by filtering and focusing light on an underlying photoreceptor
Photoreceptor

A photoreceptor, or photoreceptor cell, is a specialized type of neuron found in the eye's retina that is capable of phototransduction....
 system. Nerve bundles under each lens, presumed to be light-sensitive, transmit the optical information to the rest of the nervous system.

The only known animals to employ a similar visual system were the now-extinct trilobite
Trilobite

Trilobites are extinction marine arthropods that form the class Trilobita. They appeared in the Early Cambrian period and flourished throughout the lower Paleozoic era before beginning a drawn-out decline to extinction when, during the Late Devonian extinction, all trilobite orders, with the sole exception of Proetida, died out....
s. Phototropic chromatophores can change O. wendtii's color and regulate how much light will reach the photoreceptors.

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