A small mottled Linckia with arms of unequal length, regrowing from a single detached one.
A small sea star with five slender cylindrical arms to about 6 cm and a very small disc, smooth to slightly granular, mottled in cream, grey and pale brown and flecked all over with red or dark points. It is much smaller and much more slender than the blue sea star Linckia laevigata, and the flecked mottling is nothing like that animal’s flat blue.
Arms of unequal length are usual. The species reproduces asexually by autotomy, shedding an arm at the disc; the detached arm survives alone and regenerates four short arms at the broken end, giving the comet form, and the parent regrows the arm it lost. On rubble ground where the population is dense, animals with four different arm lengths are commoner than symmetrical ones. Echinaster luzonicus on the same ground does the same thing and produces the same shape, and the two are separated on build rather than on form: that animal is larger, its arms are stouter and slightly swollen, and its colour is a solid orange, brick red, brown or dull green rather than a fine flecking.
It is out in the open on rubble, dead coral and rock by day as well as at night, moving slowly and grazing the surface film of algae, detritus and small organisms. Recorded from the shallows to about 30 m.
Ratings are per location: 1 means found on most dives that look for it, 5 means a handful of records. Where enough dives have been logged the figure is calculated from them; otherwise it is an editorial estimate, and says so. We publish habitat and destination, not the dive site.