Ophiuroidea

reported on within the following text, is the Brittle Stars. The Brittle Star is also called the serpent star and a common name for a large group of echinoderms closely related to the starfish. These organisms make up the class Ophiuroidea; another common name for ophiuroidea is snake stars. These organisms can be found in all oceans but are more abundant in the Tropics. Brittle stars can come in different colors. 2.0 General Features Their bodies have a central disk that is demarcated from

Echinodermata is comprised of 5 classes which encompass a wide variety of species, it is estimated that there are 6500 extant species with the majority of them being marine (Pechenik, 2005). The 5 classes include Asteroidea these are the sea stars, Ophiuroidea the brittle stars, Echinoidea the sea urchins, Holothuroidea the sea cucumbers and Crinoidea the sea lilies and feather stars. There is a rich fossil record for the phylum Echinodermata due to their possession of calcareous ossicles. These calcareous

Pteropods are shelled animals about the dimension a small pea that are consumed by several animals of almost every size which range from krill to dolphins. Pteropods are at the bottom of many food chains and a decrease in their numbers can possibly destroy the chances of survival of multiple species and not only those of the ocean. However, these small creatures are challenged by the accelerating ocean acidification and thus, their shell formation hampered due to the deficiency of free calcium carbonate

Animals share certain characteristics such as being heterotrophs, multicellular, no presence of cell walls, and many more. Animals can further be divided through the use of a phylogeny, which is an evolutionary tree. A phylogeny shows patterns of relationships between several different types of species. When branching off to dissimilar species, characteristics are taken accounted for whether they are derived, ancestral, or shared traits. Traits include symmetry, tissues, segmentation, body cavities