Distribution
About 1,600 living species of starfish are known. Echinoderms maintain a delicate internal electrolyte balance in their bodies and this is only possible in a marine environment. This means that starfish occur in all of the Earth's oceans but are not found in any freshwater habitats. The greatest variety of species is found in the tropical Indo-Pacific. Other areas known for their great diversity include the tropical-temperate regions around Australia, the tropical East Pacific and the cold-temperate water of the North Pacific (California to Alaska). All starfish live on the sea bed but their larvae are planktonic, which allows them to disperse to new locations. Habitats range from tropical coral reefs, rocks, shell brash, gravel, mud and sand to kelp forests, seagrass meadows and the deep-sea floor.
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Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“My topic for Army reunions ... this summer: How to prepare for war in time of peace. Not by fortifications, by navies, or by standing armies. But by policies which will add to the happiness and the comfort of all our people and which will tend to the distribution of intelligence [and] wealth equally among all. Our strength is a contented and intelligent community.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republican institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)