Re: Do male and female starfish have special names?

Hello April,

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!

Allison J. Gong
Mad scientist