Starfish embryos form weird ‘living crystal’ we have never seen before

Whilst studying how starfish embryos swim, researchers observed a previously unseen phenomenon where the embryos clumped together into a honeycomb pattern near the surface of the water

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

Starfish embryos can organise themselves into large, oscillating crystals at the surface of water. These structures, which had never been seen before, may form because of the embryos’ swimming style and body shape.

Nikta Fakhri at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her colleagues placed hundreds of starfish embryos, each around 0.1 millimetres in size, in small salt-water tanks. The embryos then arranged themselves into honeycomb-like patterns at the water’s surface. This “living crystal” was a pulsating hexagonal grid with the round-shaped …