What are female starfish called?

I have never heard of any special names for male and female seastars (we who

study invertebrates don't like to call these animals "starfish"

because they're definitely not fish!). I think that people never came up

with names for male and female seastars because it's almost impossible to

determine the sex of a seastar without dissecting it. The only way to tell

from the outside if a seastar is a male or female is to catch it spawning --

if it sheds eggs, it's a female; if it sheds sperm, it's a male. Seastars,

and all the other echinoderms, lack any external features that identify them

as male or female. In other Words, they are not sexually dimorphic. That's

just a fancy way of saying that males and females look the same.

I hope this answers your question. Good luck with your research!

Mekkah Brown I have never heard of any special names for male and female seastars (we who

study invertebrates don't like to call these animals "starfish"

because they're definitely not fish!). I think that people never came up

with names for male and female seastars because it's almost impossible to

determine the sex of a seastar without dissecting it. The only way to tell

from the outside if a seastar is a male or female is to catch it spawning --

if it sheds eggs, it's a female; if it sheds sperm, it's a male. Seastars,

and all the other echinoderms, lack any external features that identify them

as male or female. In other Words, they are not sexually dimorphic. That's

just a fancy way of saying that males and females look the same.

I hope this answers your question. Good luck with your research!

Mekkah Brown