A knobbed star of about 10 cm (4 in) whose arms carry raised rounded bumps - the character that names it and the quickest way to separate it from the smooth-plated relatives that share the same rubble. The upper surface is plated but noticeably coarser, and the five arms are slender with blunt tips.
The name is doing more work than it should. The regional guide to this sea does not accept the animals here as that species at all: it prints them as Fromia cf. nodosa, undescribed, and gives the coloration as pale orange with white spots rather than the red of populations elsewhere. In other words there is very likely a species living on this coast that has never been formally named, and it is currently filed under the closest thing anyone had.
It occupies coral rubble and hard bottom from about 3 m to 30 m (10 to 100 ft), grazing surface film and mostly moving at night.
That makes photographs unusually valuable here. A sharp image of the upper surface, taken square rather than at an angle, is exactly what a specialist needs to confirm or correct the name later, and the animal is common enough that anyone diving rubble at night can contribute one.
- raised rounded knobs along the arms
- pale orange to red, the regional reference describing Red Sea animals as pale orange with white spots
- plated upper surface, coarser than related species
- five slender arms with blunt tips
- diameter up to 10 cm
