Picmybug has lead me to many surprises, and here’s the next. The ID is as always tricky, and I’m not 100% sure. The colors of some starfish are quite variable, so maybe my photos even show different species.
L. multiflora, the spotted Linckia, is the first starfish, or sea star in my blog. These animals are often overlooked by divers, maybe because they barely move, or because they can be quite common.
From the few species in the Maldives, this species is even amongst the least eye catching. But I will try to change that now.
Johann Heinrich Linck, a naturalist from Leipzig, Germany, is the name behind Linckia. He was one of the experts for sea stars in the 17th century. Giovanni Domenico Nardo named the genus to honor him in 1834. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck named our sea star 210 years ago. The class Asteroidea contains almost 2000 species of starfish in 17 families, and there’s quite some work to be done it seems. Our starfish belongs to the family Ophidiasteridae, what means something like snake-like, maybe referring to the slender arms. And there lies my story.
While you often see larger starfish like the spiny cushion star, the granulated sea star, or Guilding’s Sea Star in perfect shape, these palm-sized pale brown animals seem to fall apart regularly. You would often see a single arm, or a starfish missing one or more arms. And you can find specimen with irregular sized armes. That made me wonder, are they that highly predated? I would be surprised, because other starfish seem to be unharmed. The beautiful Harlequin shrimp is known to feed on starfish, but they are very rare in this area. Or too well hidden?!
Anyways it turned out that the spotted Linckia purposely looses limbs, knowing that they will regrow a fully functional starfish. A single arm will regrow a disc and the remaining number of arms! It’s a very special was of asexual reproduction. Autotomy is known from geckos, spiders, insects and crustaceans. But none of them can regrow a complete animal from the severed limb. Earthworms by the way usually die when cut in half. Only the head part might grow back a tail if it survives.
And once you know this, it becomes much more fascinating to search for the many different stages of L. multiflora. A single arm with a new disc and tiny arms almost looks like a shooting star. To make it even more exciting, there is a good chance that the single arm does not reproduce 4 arms. According to Google Ai 90% of all starfish species have 5 arms. But L. multiflora is one of the few that can be found with 4, 5, or 6 arms. Or maybe even 3 or 7? It’s almost like a four leaf clover to search for.
Have you ever found a four leaf clover? It’s often the White clover, Trifolium repens. Gabriella Gerhardt (www.fourleafcloverhunter.com), an American, holds five world records related to four leaf clover! She has the biggest collection of four leaf clovers, found the most in 8h, most in 1h, most 6 leafed clovers collocation, and so on. Who can find the most 4 armed Linckia in 1h?!
Another story around four leaf clover is this.
Alfa Romeo uses the ‘Quadrifoglio’ for their high permance models since Ugo Sivocci (a friend of Enzo Ferrari) had it on his Alfa Romeo RL in 1923. He’s won the on April 15th, while Alfieri Maserati and Enzo Ferrari didn’t finish the race. He was known as ‘l’eterno secondo’ or ‘the eternal second’, a series he finally broke with his new lucky charm.
He tragically died on September 8th 1923 while testing a new car without the clover symbol on it, and so the four leaf clover became a token of good luck for Alfa Romeo. Instead of the initially used square, they reduced the white background to a triangle, a representation of the loss of one of the four rally drivers.
There’s not much superstition in scuba diving, but maybe some of you can be challenged to find a four arm starfish?!
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