Asterias
Asterias | |
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Asterias rubens
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Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Echinodermata |
Class: | Asteroidea |
Order: | Forcipulatida |
Family: | Asteriidae |
Genus: | Asterias Linnaeus, 1758 |
Type species | |
Asterias rubens
, 1758 | |
Species | |
See text | |
Synonyms[1] | |
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Asterias is a
History
The genus Asterias was first described by
In 1825 Thomas Say listed six species native to the coasts of the United States (which at the time consisted of the east coast from Maine to Florida, which the US had just formally acquired from Spain a few years earlier). None of these species are accepted or recognised as Asterias today.[2]
Johannes Peter Müller and Franz Hermann Troschel worked on starfish systematics in 1840, renaming the genus Asteracanthion and splitting a number of new genera from it.
William Stimpson rejected Müller and Troschel's Asteracanthion in a paper presented on 4 December 1861, and named 16 new species, none of which are retained or included in Asterias at present.[3] In 1875 Edmond Perrier formally reduced Asteracanthion to a synonym.[1] Francis Jeffrey Bell listed 78 species in the genus in 1881, arranging them in some 16 unranked groupings (see artificial taxonomy).[4]
A few years later, in 1889, Percy Sladen counted 48 or 49 species in the genus. He split the genus into at least six subgenera, of which subgenus Asterias, section β of the Pentactinid (5-armed) section contained at least four species, three of which are still accepted in the genus today.[5]
In the early 1900s Addison Emery Verrill, working on the east coast of the US, added a number of new species to the genus, none of which are still in Asterias, and split the genus into numerous new genera and created new genera, moving almost all of the species now recognised as belonging to Asterias to his new genus of Allasterias. He accepted six species for the Pacific coasts of North America, none of which remain in Asterias at present.[6][7] Soon after, and in the following two decades, Walter Kenrick Fisher, working in California, synonymised or removed all of Verrill's species of Asterias, and synonymised Verrill's new genera of Allasterias and Parasterias with Asterias,[8] leaving the genus with four species, all of which are still recognised today.[9] Ryori Hayashi synonymised one further Japanese species in 1940, leaving the genus with three species known since the previous century, all of which are still recognised today.[10]
Alexander Michailovitsch Djakonov added two new species from Far East Russia in 1950 and reinstated the three species which were synonymised by Fisher and Hayashi, bringing the genus to eight species,
Description
Asterias, like most starfish genera in the order
Sladen distinguishes it from the genus Uniophora by the presence of spines on its abactinal plates, instead of large, spherical tubercles; and from Anasterias by the well-developed, reticulate, abactinal skeleton.[5]
Species
The World Register of Marine Species includes the following species:[1] Distributions from Djakonov (1950).[11]
Image | Scientific name | Distribution |
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Asterias amurensis Lütken, 1871 | northern Pacific seastar: northern ) | |
Asterias argonauta Djakonov, 1950 | Primorsky Krai (Peter the Great Gulf), South Korea | |
Asterias forbesi (Desor, 1848) | northwest | |
Asterias microdiscus Djakonov, 1950 | Avacha Bay on the southeastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Karaginsky Island | |
Asterias rathbuni (Verrill, 1909) | western Alaska to Far East Russia (Kamchatka peninsula, Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea) | |
Asterias rollestoni Bell, 1881 | around Japan, in the Sea of Japan, and in the Yellow Sea along the coasts of China. | |
common starfish: northern Atlantic in Europe from the White Sea of Russia to the Americas. | ||
Asterias versicolor Sladen, 1889 | around southern Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. |
References
- ^ a b c Mah, Christopher L. (2007). "Asterias Linnaeus, 1758". World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). Flanders Marine Institute. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ Say, Thomas (1825). "On the species of the Linnaean genus Asterias inhabiting the coast of the United States". Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 5 (1): 506–507. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ Stimpson, William (1862). "On New Genera and Species of Starfishes of the Family Pycnopodidæ (Asteracanthion Müll. and Trosch.)". Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History. 8: 261–273. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ Bell, Francis Jeffrey (1881). "1. Contributions to the Systematic Arrangement of the Asteroidea. I The species of the genus Asterias". Proceedings of the Zoological Journal of London: 503–507. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ a b Sladen, Walter Percy (1889). Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873–1876, Zoology 30, Report on the Asteroidea (part 51). London: Government of the United Kingdom. pp. 560–564.
- ^ Verrill, Addison Emery (1909). "Description of new genera and species of starfishes from the North Pacific coast of America". American Journal of Science. 28: 65–70. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- . Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ a b Fisher, Walter Kenrick (1923). "A preliminary synopsis of the Asteriidae, a family of sea-stars". Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 12 (9): 248-249, 598–599. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ Fisher, Walter Kenrick (1930). "Asteroidea of the North Pacific and Adjacent Waters, Part 3: Forcipulata". United States National Museum Bulletin. 76 (3). U.S. Government Printing Office: 5–6. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
- ^ Hayashi, Ryori (1940). "Contributions to the Classification of the Sea-stars of Japan" (PDF). 北海道帝國大學理學部紀要 (Journal of the Faculty of Science Hokkaido Imperial University) Series VI. Zoology. 7 (3): 223–226. Retrieved 17 November 2019.
- ^ St. Petersburg: Акаде́мии Нау́к СССР. pp. 121–128.
External links
- British Marine Life Study Society page on Asterias rubens
- Data related to Asterias at Wikispecies