science fair project

If you plan on actually observing one keep these in mind:

#1 Actually cutting off a arm yourself can often cause a fungal infection, hence excellent water quality would be required.

#2 Certain starfish have little to no regenerative capabilities and will regenerate arms VERY slow, Brittle stars are among the quickest and fastest in terms of regeneration (they break off thier arms to escape preditors, hence the name "Brittle") and can usually start to see recovery within a week assuming its in good health. Shrilanka's are an example of poor regeneration, and can often take weeks before any signs of recovery are noticed, again assuming the health of the star in question.


If you dont plan on actually preforming an experiement on a live one, its often hard to find information on just arm recovery, since most studies are done with actual aesexual cloning, as in actually cutting a starfish in half and both halves regenerating into 2 complete organisms.

WHat kind of information are you looking for? If you are looking for stuff about the molecular mechanisms of regeneration, you might hunt around for articles using PubMed. Using the keywords "echinoderm regeneration" got me a few hits. If you are looking for relative rates in different species, I would be willing to bet that a lot of that was done a long time ago, and may not be so easy to get online. I'll poke around a little bit more, and see what turns up.

you can't find any info on google?

Growth rates

In my experience the single biggest factor in growth is water volume. If you plan an actual hands on experiment with a starfish in some sort of tank the data will be poorly reflective of nature.