Arbacia punctulata is a species of Arbacia genus of purple-spined sea urchins. Its natural habitat is in the Western Atlantic Ocean. Arbacia punctulata can be found in shallow water from Massachusetts to Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula, from Texas to Florida in the Gulf of Mexico, the coast from Panama to French Guiana and in the Lesser Antilles, usually on rocky, sandy, or shelly bottoms.
A. punctulata is omnivorous, consuming a wide variety of preys although Karlson classified it as a generalized carnivore. It has been shown that it is galactolipids, rather than phlorotannins, that act as herbivore deterrents in Fucus vesiculosus against A. punctulata.
For more than a century, developmental biologists have valued the sea urchin as an experimental model organism. Sea urchin eggs are transparent and can be manipulated easily in the research laboratory. Their eggs can be easily fertilized and then develop rapidly and synchronously.
For decades, the sea urchin embryo has been used to establish the chromosome theory of heredity, the description of centrosomes, parthenogenesis, and fertilization. Research work during the last 30 years established such important phenomena as stable mRNA and translational control, isolation and characterization of the mitotic apparatus, and the realization that the major structural proteins of the mitotic apparatus are microtubules. Sea urchin studies provided the first evidence of actin in non-muscle cells.
Arbacia punctulata is also a model organism of marine sediments toxicity and sperm study.