Cladaster Verrill, 1899

Mah, Christopher L., 2018, New genera, species and occurrence records of Goniasteridae (Asteroidea; Echinodermata) from the Indian Ocean, Zootaxa 4539 (1), pp. 1-116 : 29-31

Cladaster Verrill, 1899

Verrill 1899: 175; Fisher 1911: 221; Bernasconi 1963: 13; 1964: 255; Halpern 1970: 179; Clark & Downey 1992: 238; A.M. Clark 1993: 251; Mah 2011: 19.

Diagnosis. Body weakly stellate. Abactinal plates low tabulate with weakly to strongly expressed fasciolar channels. Hemispherical, coarse grained granules present on abactinal, marginal, and actinal plate surface which are deciduous on preserved specimens. Large, spatulate type pedicellariae. Furrow spines, blunt to spatulate, oval in cross-section. Large, thick subambulacral spine present in addition to furrow spine.

Comments. Cladaster includes four species, which occur in deep-water settings, including C. analogus from the South Atlantic and New Zealand region, Cladaster macrobrachius from South Africa, Cladaster rudis in the tropical Atlantic, and Cladaster validus from the Aleutian Islands. Cladaster latus McKnight 2006 was found to be a synonym of C. analogous by Mah (2011).

As outlined by Mah (2011) Cladaster species are known from widely disparate localities but differ by relatively few and/or continuous characters. The most morphologically distinct species in this genus appear geographically discontinuous. It is possible that further sampling might show a widely occurring species as was observed in Hippasteria ( Mah et al. 2015) , which displays a similar pattern throughout its range.