Gorgeous Closeups of Australian Starfishes!

Greetings! This week, I thought I would share some GREAT closeups of the textures and plates on some sea stars from one of my favorite places in the world-AUSTRALIA! 

If you would like to see more of photo essays like this I've done one here and another one here about the oral plates on sea stars and this more recent one on Acanthaster planci, the crown of thorns! 

These were all taken from images on Flickr, and so the original photographers can be found merely by rolling over the image itself. What's great about them, is that the images were taken from LIVING animals, and so their colors remain vibrant! Nothing here is photoshopped.

Contributions herein by photographers:  Bill, Tony Brown, Beth Heap, Leander, Richard Ling,  Lox Pix, Morley Mason, Andrew Newton, Matt Nimbs, Valguille and especially SASpotato! 

An asterinid, Patiriella I think?

Here is a close up of the papulae or gills on Plectaster decanus 

The rest of the animal looks like this. Gorgeous.

Some goniasterid beauties! Pentagonaster dubeni

Lovely plate architecture on Tosia australis

From above, these are the surface plates of the goniasterid genus Nectria

and here's what the rest of the goniasterid Nectria looks like!

image by Peter Southwood, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goniasteridae#/media/File:Nectria_ocellata_P2133340.JPG

A stunning yellow one!

The very distinctive button like plates on Asterodiscides sp. 

and from the same animal, the large penultimate marginal plates, which are distinctive of the genus.

Some nice spination from what looks to be Coscinasterias

Uniophora granifera! One of my favorites!