Starfish Starfish Starfish or sea stars are star-shaped echinoderms belonging to the class Asteroidea. Common usage frequently finds these names being also applied to ophiuroids, which are correctly referred to as brittle stars or "basket stars". About 1,500 species of starfish occur on the seabed in all the world's oceans, from the tropics to frigid polar waters. They are found from the intertidal zone down to abyssal depths, below the surface. Starfish are marine invertebrates. They typically have a central disc and five arms, though some species have a larger number of arms. The aboral or upper surface may be smooth,
Chloroflexi (phylum) in the description of that species the class was not made official nor were families or orders laid out as the two species share only 90% 16S identity, meaning that they could fall in different families or even orders. Recent phylogenetic analysis of the Chloroflexi has found very weak support for the grouping together of the different classes currently part of the phylum. The six classes that make up the phylum did not consistently form a well-supported clade in phylogenetic trees based on concatenated sequences for large datasets of proteins and no conserved signature indels were identified that were uniquely