Photo of the Week: Featherweight

"That specimen was collected as part of our NSF (National Science Foundation) project Assembling the Echinoderm Tree of Life (recently concluded)," Rouse wrote. "We are working on building an evolutionary tree of living crinoids (featherstars and sea lilies) using next-generation technology DNA sequencing. We went to Raja Ampat in Indonesia as this region has a high diversity of featherstars."

 

Featherstars like this are crinoids, marine animals that use their arms to filter particles of food from seawater.

 

Images on Rouse's Instagram feed highlight the variety of featherstars as well as their symbiotic relationships with other creatures, ranging from squat lobsters to cling fish.