Sea Star Development

In this segment, you'll get to cover the sea star development. Comparing the process of human development with the sea star reveals such similarities. Sea stars are more than pretty creatures that are falsely portrayed in cartoons. They are a crucial part of the marine ecosystem as well as facilitate the process of learning about human development.

Here we learn about many different ideas including, sea star structure and classification, differences between fertilized and unfertilized sea star eggs, types of cleavage and the different stages of development of a sea star.

Covering nitty-gritty details from a fertilized egg to larva to an adult sea star. Understanding crucial developmental stages such as the blastula and gastrula in specific details. While also understanding why does the sea star development include a larva stage.

One of the main differences between human and sea star fertilization is the location, one occurs internally while the other occurs externally, respectively. A sea star is classified as radially symmetrical meaning that if you draw a line vertically you will have two identical sides, mirroring each other. Sea stars belong to the phylum Echinoderma which translates to spiky skin animals.

Check this booklet of my notes for the laboratory course! It includes everything from both the theoretical and the practical work that was done regarding “Sea Star Development”.

You can use this booklet as a guide when studying this course. You can download it and customize it to further understand this topic. You have the choice to make it more colourful by highlighting some keywords or even add more information.

This includes all the covered topics with specific illustrations to facilitate the understanding of certain topics such as the specific structural changes that occurs during different stages of the blastula and gastrula.

Feel free to share your customized copies with me on my instagram account or on my email!