Question

What type of asexual reproduction does a starfish show?

Answer 1

Hint: Starfishes are the members of phylum Echinodermata and class Asteroidea. They live in marine environments and have a central disc and five arms. They also have tube feet that work by a hydraulic system and help the Starfish to locomote from one place to another. Starfishes can regenerate their lost arms and often use their arms as a weapon for self defense. They reproduce by both methods, i.e., sexually and asexually.

Complete answer:
Starfish reproduce asexually by two methods namely autotomy of their arms and fission.
While reproducing by autotomy, Starfishes shed one arm of their body with some portion of the central disc. This detached part survives individually in the form of a comet and later regenerates the remaining arms. Although the broken parts lack a proper water vascular system and a nervous system, the comets do not face any difficulty in survival. However, the mortality of the newer cut fragments is relatively very high. They have high chances of survival only after the wound is healed within a duration of $$10$$ days. The regeneration process takes around $$10$$ months for a complete starfish to develop. The capacity of regeneration is found in almost all the sea living organisms.
Fission is the type of asexual reproduction in which the reproducing organksm breaks into two parts and each part develops into another individual. During fission in a starfish, the central disc of starfish disintegrates into two pieces. Each piece then regenerates into a new Starfish. Fission occurs around spring or summers and happens once in a year or once every two years. Presence of multiple madreporites is an important characteristic of starfish that undergo fission. It may also be linked to certain stress conditions such as a low tide when Starfishes are exposed to air.

Note:
Some coral polyps and sea anemones reproduce by the process of fission. Asexual reproduction is the production of off springs that are clones of their parents as they are genetically identical. The various modes of asexual reproduction include budding that is seen in hydras and corals, fission that is seen in asteroid echinoderms, fragmentation that is seen in sea star and parthenogenesis that is seen in rotifers and stick insects.