Novodinia antillensis

Novodinia antillensis, called the velcro sea star, belongs to the starfish family Brisingidae. It lives in deep waters of the tropical and subtropical western Atlantic Ocean, and is especially common at about 500 meters deep on the Mesoamerican Reef near Roatán, Honduras.

This starfish has ten to fourteen long, tapering arms. Each arm tip bears a large eyespot made up of roughly one hundred complex ocelli, though these structures contain almost no sensory cells and may not work. The central disc and arms are covered in spines, and those spines are equipped with pedicellariae—small, claw- or wrench-shaped organs.

The velcro sea star perches on the branches of deep-water corals that grow like trees. It stretches its arms into the water to catch drifting small crustaceans. The arms form a feeding fan; the pedicellariae grab and hold prey, and the arms curl into loops to move the food to the mouth.

On the Cape Fear coral mound off North Carolina, at about 400 meters deep, the main large bottom-dwelling animals included N. antillensis, along with American conger eels, alfonsino fish, sea urchins, and squat lobsters (Eumunida picta). Each species, especially the fish, preferred a specific niche, often on the mound’s southern and southwestern slopes. More occasional visitors to the seamount were shortbeard codling and blackbelly rosefish, mostly found on the lower slopes and base.

Two new steroidal saponins, named Sch 725737 and Sch 725739, have been isolated from N. antillensis.