“HOW DO I LEARN MORE?”

Now that you know some basics, where can you find out more about ophiuroids? For a start, you can check on the "Links"  page. I have listed a few links that I have encountered while surfing the  'net.

If you keep  ophiuroids in your salt water aquarium, there are a few books on  keeping healthy aquaria that are available at local bookstores like Borders, Barnes and Noble or your local pet and aquarium store.  There are also some sites on this tips page.

For other  information on morphology and basics on ecology, feeding,  reproduction, etc. , you may wish to refer to any university level  invertebrate  zoology text such as those by Barnes (Invertebrate  Zoology which has numerous editions) and Brusca & Brusca (Invertebrates has one edition with a new one due out soon). The great series by  Libbie Hyman (The Invertebrates, Volume IV, Echinodermata) is still  considered an excellent source.

Ophiuroid  research is published in a wide variety of scientific journals  generally carried at university libraries, such as Invertebrate  Biology. International  and European Echinoderm Conferences also publish proceedings volumes  which have papers or abstracts of the research presented at the conference.

1996

(Examples of the Proceedings of the 9th International Echinoderm Conference, San  Francisco on left and the 8th IEC in Dijon, France on right. All  published by  Balkema)

1993

The classic resource for  information on fossil echinoderms is the 'Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology,'  Edited by Raymond C. Moore, 1966.  There are a number of volumes, but  the ophiuroids are covered in Part U, Echinodermata 3. This book is  probably available at university libraries. For a personal copy, you  may wish to try ABE BOOKS an  excellent resource for used books listing the inventory of dozens of booksellers.

Expedition reports are the primary sources of species descriptions and are  generally only available through museums. Most species of ophiuroids were described in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,  but many continue to be described today. The early works are  generally published as self contained volumes, such as the Challenger Ophiuroidea  by Theodore Lyman ( a series in the 1880's) or the Ophiuroids of the Philippine Seas and Adjacent Waters by  R. Koehler (1922) and numerous additional expeditions. Recent works that are aimed at both researchers and general interest include the  (beautiful) book Sea  Stars, Sea Urchins and Allies (Echinoderms of Florida and the Caribbean) by Hendler, Miller, Pawson  and Kier (available online at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, etc.) See the Books section for further information!

Some other  major taxonomic works are:
  • Fell, H.B.  1960. Synoptic keys to the genera of Ophiuroidea. Zoology  Publications from Victoria University of Wellington,  No. 26(.PDF  COMING SOON to the Books section!)
  • Clark,  H.L. 1915. Catalogue of Recent Ophiurans: based on the collection of  the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Memoirs  of the Museum of  Comparative Zoology of Harvard College 25:165-376, pls. 1-20 (this is a list of the then known species of  brittlestars with descriptions of a number of new genera)
    Matsumoto,  H. 1917. A monograph of the Japanese Ophiuroidea, arranged according  to a new classification. Journal  of the College of Science, Imperial University of Tokyo 38:1-408, pls.1-7 (this is a reclassification based on a lot of  internal morphology) (.PDF  COMING SOON to the Books section!)
    Murakami,  S. 1963. The dental and oral plates of Ophiuroidea. Transactions  of the Royal Society of New Zealand 4:1-48.