Psalm 104:24-25: Biodiversity, with Echinoderms (starfish and their relatives)

The animals in the picture above are brittle stars, a member of the same phylum as starfish, sea urchins, and others, and a sponge, also an animal. Echinoderms, among other oddities, have five-fold symmetry. The graphic serves as a link to a Flickr picture, which, among other information, has the credit for the original photo. (Altered and posted with permission of the underwater photographer.)

Here's an amazing video, less than three minutes, from the BBC, showing starfish (also known as sea stars), Nemertean worms, and sea urchins, swarming around a dead seal pup, off the coast of Antarctica.

I thank a friend who looked at one of the previous posts in this series for the tip on this video.

Thanks for looking and reading.

Psalm 104:24-25: How diverse are marine animals?

The graphic above gives the names of most (not all) of the 36 phyla of animals which are currently known. (There are 36 recognized phyla, at present.) You probably have little or no idea as to what a member of the Loricifera or the Echiura would be like. I don't either. (If you want to know, use the link in this paragraph.)

A phylum is a large group of animals. For example, mice belong to the Chordata (so do we) and ladybugs belong to the Arthropoda. Mice and ladybugs are not very much alike, and those two phyla are probably as much like each other as any two other phyla of animals. What amazing diversity. In the previous paragraph, I said "at present" because we may discover other animals that don't belong to any of the 36 phyla, or we may learn more about one of the phyla, and this knowledge may lead zoologists to divide that phylum into two such.

What amazing diversity! Thank God. Thanks for reading.

Psalm 104:24-25: Biodiversity in marine animals

Psalm 104 is a fine nature poem, indeed. It was apparently written by David.

As a biologist, I have been struck, for many years, with verses 24-25:
24 Yahweh, how many are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all.
The earth is full of your riches.
25 There is the sea, great and wide,
in which are innumerable living things,
both small and large animals. (World English Bible, public domain)

I have recently made some attempts to illustrate this, using computer graphics, and some photos, of marine animals, from Flickr members, with their permission. This picture:


is the first in a series of these attempts. It was first posted on Flickr, with appropriate credit given to the photographer -- the photograph was taken at the Monterey, California, aquarium. (The picture serves as a link to the Flickr post.) There are at least three phyla, represented by the fish, the sponges, and the corals, in the photo. The word, biodiversity, was produced using a different color, and a different typeface, for each letter, to represent diversity. The colors of the letters were chosen to be colors that could be found in marine organisms.

Thanks for looking!