Wednesday, December 9, 2009

WEIRD SPINES!! Sometimes there's even questions the Echinoblog can't answer!

So, the other day, a colleague of mine, sent a pic of the above spines, collected from Wake Island in the tropical Pacific. They are deformed in ways that I am completely unfamiliar.

Here's a picture of the species that they spines are from (Heterocentrotus trigonarius)
Anyone out there have any experience with weird-ass melted sea urchin spines??

1 comment:

Muddskipper said...

Couldn't that be caused by parasites? I can't recall which ones in particular right now, but I know there are some that burrow into spines and cause weird growths.