ABSTRACT
The egg diameters of Luidia alternata, L. clathrata and L. senegalensis are 193, 168 and 197 µm, respectively. The egg develops into a bipinnaria through a wrinkled blastula in all three species. Full grown bipinnariae are 1.8 and 1.5 mm in length and metamorphose 29 and 18 days after fertilization in L. clathrata and L. senegalensis, respectively. Consequently, their development is of the nonbrachiolarian type. The newly metamorphosed juveniles of both species have 5 arms though the adult L. senegalensis have 9 arms. The observations made on these 3 species of Luidia and those reported for others in the literature indicate the occurrence of small-sized bipinnaria similar to other asteroid bipinnaria in this genus against the previous belief. The size and shape of bipinnaria may be correlated to the evolutionary relationships of the species of Luidia.
