Zoology Second year

Semester (1)
Zool 2106 - Echinodermata

Presented by :
Aye Khant Khant Win
Myint Myat Noe Zaw
Pann Myint Zuu
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Saw Theingi Htun

 Phylum- Echinodermata
• Echinoderms, any of a variety of invertebrate marine animals belonging to the phylum
echinodermata, characterized by a hard, spiny covering or skin.
• There are about 7,000 species found usually on the sea floor in every marine habitat.
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 Learning Objectives
• Aim to know about the ecology and behavior of echinoderms

• Define echinoderms as a phylum, including their common characteristics

• Discuss and debate the evolution, adaptations, and roles of echinoderms

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 Practical-1
Brittle Stars, Feather Stars, Basket Star
Brittle Stars

Phylum - Echinodermata
Class - Ophiuroidea
Order - Ophiurida
Family - Ophiotrichidae
Genus - Ophiothrix sp.

Characteristics & Habitat

 A hairy appearance due to all the fine spines, on each arm.

 Spines on the central disk.
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 Wide range of colors like green, brown, orange, yellow or red.

 Radially symmetrical.
 Live on spiny sponges and other sessile animals at the bottom of the
deep sea and in abundant masses directly on the seafloor.
 Behaviour
• Drop an arm when being attacked by a predator.

• Wound heals and the arm regrows, a process which can take
weeks to months, depending upon the species.

Feeding
• Feed on detritus and small oceanic organisms such as plankton,
small mollusks and even fish.

• Some will raise themselves on their arms and when fish get close
enough, they wrap them in a spiral and eat them.
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• May also feed by lifting up their arms to trap tiny particles and
algae using the mucous strands on their tube feet.
 Locomotion

• Move fairly rapidly by wriggling their arms which are highly

flexible and enable the animals to make either snake-like or
rowing movements.

• Five radially symmetrical arms that coordinate to move the

body in a certain direction.
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 EXAMPLE SPECIES

Amphiodia Ophiocoma Ophiactis

occidentalis wendtii savignyi
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 Feather Stars
Phylum -Echinodermata
Class -Crinoidea
Order -Comatulida
Family -Tropiometridae
Genus -Tropiometra sp.

Characteristics & Habitat

 Five pairs of long and slender, feather-like arms.
 Coated with a sticky substance helping them to catch food drifting by.
 Anus is turned upwards and on the underside of the small central disk, feet used to cling to the
bottom or even move around.
 Regenerate broken or lost body parts and can regrow all of their missing limbs.
 Variety of colors or in a colorful pattern and the deeper the feather star’s habitat is, the paler its
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color.
 Marine animals, live on coral reefs.
 Found in depths of 30,000 feet.
 Behaviour
• Live in clumps, attaching themselves to crevices and other places in which they can hide most of their body.

• Come out at night.

•
• Use their arms to crawl.

• Some swim by alternating their arms up and down.

• Go down through the water by extending their arms like parachutes.

Feeding
• Feed on tiny drifting organisms and particles.
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• Raise their arms up into the current and catch food particles in a sticky mucous that covers their feet.

• Once a few food particles have been caught, the foot furthest from the mouth bends down to the foot below it.
 Locomotion
• Move about by moving their arms.
• Crawl over soft sediments, using their arms to drag
themselves over the surface, lifting up the central
portion of their bodies.
• Arms and pinnules have tiny hooks that catch on the
surface.
• Swim by thrashing their arms in the water.
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 EXAMPLE
SPECIES

Himerometra Comaster Antedon

robustipinna nobilis mediterranea
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 Basket Stars
Phylum - Echinodermata
Class - Ophiuroidea
Order - Phrynophiurida
Genus - Astrophyton sp.

Characteristics & Habitat

 Sea animals that have long, thin, flexible arms.
 Yellowish to brown in color, and with a disk to 38mm across.
 Disk is naked with spines on 5 pairs of radial ridges and scattered in between.
 Arms branch repeatedly, and outer parts form a dense tangle.
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 Many of them live in deep sea habitats or cold waters, though some can be
seen at night in shallow tropical reefs.
 Behaviour
• Each arm branches out into multiple smaller offshoots,
similar to the roots of a tree.
• Furled tightly while at rest.
• Feed by extending their arms into the current to capture
planktonic animal, such as copepods and invertebrate
larvae.
Feeding
• Feeds by anchoring itself to the sea floor and extending its arms
into the current forming a wide basket.
• Small shellfish, jellyfish, and other critters that float with the
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current flow right into the basket.

• The barbs trap the unfortunate prey, encase it in strands of mucus,
then pull it down to it’s mouth.
 Locomotion

• Use their flexible articulated arm primarily for crawling or clinging.

• Skeletal arrangement of arms allows for extensive “lateral” movement but have
no flexibility parallel to the oral-aboral axis.
• Though tube feet lack suckers and ampullae
• Have well-developed muscles in their wall.
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 EXAMPLE
SPECIES

Gorgonocephalus
Astrocladus Euryale Gorgonocephalus arcticus
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eucnemis
 Practical-2
External features of Sea Urchin and Sand Dollars
SEA URCHIN
Phylum – Echinodermata
Class – Echinoidea
Order – Echinoida
Family – Echinidae
Genus – Echinus

Characteristics of Sea Urchin

• Have a round, spiny body covered with small plates.
• Have a pentaradial symmetry.
• Range in size from about 2.5 to 10 centimeters (1 to 4
inches) in diameter. Echinus (Sea Urchin)
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• Don’t have eyes, but their entire body is a light-sensitive

compound eye.
• Calcite is the substance that forms it’s skeleton.
 BEHAVIOUR
• Active nocturnally, moving out of shelters at night to
graze.
• Move slowly and with unpredictable movements
• When they smell a predator, they escape following a
ballistic motion ─straightforward, quick and
directional─ to escape the threat.

LOCOMOTION
• The sea floor using their spines and a row of tube feet.
• Tube feet are powered by water flowing in and out of
them, and equipped with suction cup-like feet.
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 Feeding
• Using a structure called aristotle's lantern.
• Made up of five hard plates that come together like a beak.
• Use beak-like mouth to scrape rocks clean of algae.
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Herbivores and Omnivory and

Grazing Scavenging
 Example species

Echinus Tripneustes Arbacia

esculentus gratilla punctulate
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 SAND DOLLARS
Phylum : Echinodermata
Class : Echinoidea
Order : Clypeasteroida
Family : Echinarachniidae
Genus : Echinarachnius sp.

General Characteristics
• Range in size from 1-15 cm
• Flattened skeleton(test) covered with a dense thicked of tiny spines
• Aboral surface exhibits flower petal-shaped grooves( petaloids) that
correspond to the arms of sea stars and brittle stars
• Tube feet in the petaloids are used in locomotion
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• At the center of the petal-shaped body is the mouth of the sand dollar
while the anus is at the back of the creature.
• When alive, sand dollars are purple, not white. White is a color their
shells assume after death.
 Food and feeding
• Omnivorous and have different ways of eating,
depending on their position.
• Suspension feeders when they are upright.
• Microscopic algae, small copepods, diatoms, crustacean
larvae, and prey they catch with their spines and feet.
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 Behavior
• Live in shallow water.
• Pumps water through its body to move away from predators.
• Spend most of their time on the ocean floor, slowly creeping
along looking for food to eat.

Locomotion
• Uses its spines to move along the sand, or to drive
edgewise into the sand.
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• On the upper half of the it’s body, spines also serve

as gills.
 EXAMPLE SPECIES

Dendraster Peronella Clypeaster

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excentricus lesueuri japonicus

 Practical -3
Cucumaria and Thyone
Cucumaria
Phylum : Echinodermata
Class : Holothuroidea
Order : Dendrochirotida
Family : Cucumariidae
Genus : Cucumaria Sp.

Characteristics
 Generally orange or reddish brown.
 Easily indentifiable by their orange coloration and branching tentacles.
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 Body is thick and has five rows of tube feet, separated by smooth, soft skin.
 Pentameric radial system is present in five equally spaced rows of feet.
 Live in rocky areas from the intertidal zone to a depth of 100 m of water.
 Food and Feeding
• Feed on small food items in the benthic zone
(seafloor), as well as plankton floating in the
water column.

• Algae, aquatic invertebrates, and waste particles

also make up their diet.

• suspension feeders.

• use their bushy tentacles to capture detritus and

plankton from the water column.

• then pull the tentacle via the feeding arm into the
mouth to remove the food.
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• Small tentacles around the mouth also help prevent

food from escaping.
 Locomotion

• Move slowly by using their tiny tube feet.

• Some also have a faster escape response .

• Swim by flexing their bodies and inching along the seafloor.

• As a deep they crawls across the seafloor, mud and tiny pieces

of fallen food cling to its sticky tentacles.

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 Thyone
Phylum : Echinodermata
Class : Holothuroidea
Order : Dendrochirotida
Family : Phyllophoridae
Genus : Thyone
Characteristics
● A species of sea cucumber in the family phyllophoridae.
● Marine and found being completely buried in sandy and muddy bottom.
● Body is elongated somewhat swollen in the middle with mouth and anus at
opposite ends podia or tube feet are distributed over the entire body surface.
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● Oral end bears the mouth surrounded by branched tentacles.

● Two tentacles attached to the mid-ventral ambulacral area are much smaller than
others.
 Food and Feeding
● Suspension feeder, consuming diatoms, single-cell
algae and drifting organic particles, as well as
zooplankton such as copepods, ostracods, protozoans,
nematodes, jellyfish and larvae.

● Two ventral feeding tentacles are much shorter than

the others and have forked ends.

● Catches food particles floating past with its branching

feeding tentacles.
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 Reproduction
● Anus is placed on the aboral end.
● Sexes are separate.
● Development includes auricularia larva.
● great power of regeneration and autonomy.

Locomotion
● If Thyone is placed on a hard surface, such as the bottom of a glass dish.
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● It attaches the tube-feet and moves across the surface it away from the source of the light.

● It is very sensitive to photic stimulation

 Practical-4
Food, Feeding and locomotion of
Asterias
Asterias
Phylum - Echinodermata
Class - Asteroidea
Order - Forcipulatida
Family - Asterridae
Genus - Asterias spp.

Characteristics
• Around 1,600 different species of asterias living in the world's oceans.
• Occupy every type of habitat including tidal pools, rocky shores, sea grass, kelp beds and coral reefs.
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• Five arms that are abroad at the base and taper at the end
• Aboral (upper) surface is usually orange to brick red in color and the oral (lower) surface is of paler
shades.
 Measurement
• May grow up to 9 inches in diameter, but
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commonly 9- 12 inches.
• Some species are only about 0.4 inch (1
centimeter), and others are as much as 25 inches
(65 centimeters) across.
 Food and Feeding
 Mostly carnivores and scavengers.

 Usually feed on coral, sponges, clams, oysters, sand

dollars, and mussels.

 Eats by attaching to prey and extending its stomach

out through its mouth.

 Enzymes from it’s stomach digest the prey.

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 Asterias can regenerate because they have what scientists call

'indeterminate stem cells'. They also reproduces asexually by
the process of regeneration.
 Locomotion
 On the underside of the starfish are rows of movable projections
called tube feet.

 Move in any direction, with any one of its arms in the lead.

 Tube feet look like suction cups, but the asterias actually grip the
floor using adhesive chemicals.

 Tube feet move in a wave, with one section of the arm attaching
using chemicals as another area of the arm releases its grip

 Move using a water vascular system.

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• Although these creatures cannot swim, they are very good at crawling and can walk up strands of seaweed and climb down the sides
of rocks.
 CONCLUSION
• All capable of some form of regeneration.
• Echinoderms All Feature Radial Symmetry
• Echinoderms Don’t Have Blood
• Some Echinoderms Feed By Ejecting Their Stomachs
• Echinoderms Have No head, brain and heart
• Most echinoderms poisonous
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 Area of Improvement
(Zool 2106 – Echinodermata)

To explore more deeply about Echinoderms

 Want to go field trips to costal area of Myanmar and

beaches such as Ngapali, Ngwe Saung, and Chaung
Tha.

 Then study the local species of echinoderms including their

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anatomy and physiology, genetics evolution, classification,

and behavior.
 University of Yangon, Department of
Zoology Professors

Dr. Kay Lwin Tun

Dr. Sandar Win
Dr. Aye Aye Khine(1)
Dr. Khin Wai Hlaing
Dr. Khin Lay Nwe
Dr. Aye Aye Khine(2)

Department Of Zoology’s Practical Teachers

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Tr. Pont Pont

Tr. Khin Nyein Aye
Tr.Yie Mon Thein
 THANKS
FOR
YOUR
ATTENTI
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ON.