
The eyes and cameras of the world become multifold when you everyone is uploading their pictures onto the service. Is Flickr a new tool for documenting global biodiversity??
So, I had a curious thought, by ONLY finding pictures labelled as "starfish" and not identified as species, with NO indication that the original photographer knew much more than "starfish" (or cared if they even HAD a scientific name) could I produce a relatively comprehensive summary of the common (and even some not so common) species for a particular region??
I chose New Zealand which has a distinct and a relatively well-known shallow-water starfish fauna.
I was surprised.
You can recover quite a few large number of taxa from Flickr. I have not captured every species-but as far as nearshore shallow-water taxa?? Pretty good.
In no particular order....
(please note all pix that follow were from Flickr and were not taken by me)
Asterodiscides truncatus (Asterodiscididae) taken by TimChao



Patiriella sp. (Asterinidae) taken by Padraic7


Stichaster australis (Asteriidae/Stichasterinae) taken by Ariel Ophelia


Astrostole scabra (Asteriidae) taken by Distorted.Vision





The ophiuroid Ophiopsammus maculata (Ophiodermatidae) taken by TELPortfolio.

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