Noble Feather Star

Comaster nobilis

''Comaster nobilis'', the noble/yellow feather star, is a crinoid in the family Comasteridae. It was previously classified as ''Comanthina nobilis'' but further research showed that it was better placed in the genus ''Comaster''.
Noble Feather Star (Comaster nobilis) Serena Pata, Lembeh. I place this ID based on the picture in the book for Reef Creature Identification Tropical Pacific Paul Human & Ned Deloach. In there it says that it can be very variable in colors but typically with some white and the pic they have is blueish black with yellow and white tips. Now, in Wikipedia they show a yellow one. Comaster nobilis,Geotagged,Indonesia,Spring

Appearance

''Comaster nobilis'' can reach a diameter of about 40 cm. It has a cup-shaped body with 35-40 arms, extended out from the central disc. This species may occur in a number of colour variations. Usually it has yellow arms, sometimes with some black or green and white on the under surface close to the centre. It feeds on detritus, fitoplancton and zooplancton. The larvae of this feather star swim freely with plankton for a few weeks, then they settle down growing into a stalked form. Mature specimen break the stalk becoming free-living.

Distribution

This species is widespread in the Indo-Pacific, from Coral Sea and Great Barrier Reef up to Indonesia, Malaysia, New Caledonia and Philippines.

Habitat

It is found on hard or soft corals in shallow water reefs, at a depth of 10 – 50 m.

References:

Some text fragments are auto parsed from Wikipedia.

Taxonomy
KingdomAnimalia
DivisionEchinodermata
ClassCrinoidea
OrderComatulida
FamilyComatulidae
GenusComaster
SpeciesC. nobilis
Photographed in
Indonesia