Astropectinidae Gray, 1840

Cunha, Rosana, Martins, Luciana, Menegola, Carla & Souto, Camilla, 2021, Taxonomy of the sea stars (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) from Bahia State, including ontogenetic variation and an illustrated key to the Brazilian species, Zootaxa 4955 (1), pp. 1-78 : 7-8

Family Astropectinidae Gray, 1840

Genus Astropecten Gray, 1840

Type species. Astropecten aranciacus ( Linnaeus, 1758) (by subsequent designation by Fisher, 1908).

Remarks. With more than 105 species described, Astropecten is one of the most diverse sea star genera ( Zulliger & Lessios 2010). Of these species, 25 occur in the Atlantic Ocean and eight occur in Brazil: Astropecten acutiradiatus , A. alligator Perrier, 1881 , A. antillensis , A. articulatus ( Say, 1825) , A. brasiliensis brasiliensis , A. cingulatus , A. duplicatus Gray, 1840 and A. marginatus . In the molecular phylogeny of the genus Astropecten proposed by Zulliger & Lessios (2010), the West Atlantic species form a clade with the East Pacific species, most likely separated by the Isthmus of Panama as suggested by Tortonese (1956). Sister to this clade is a clade composed of East Atlantic and Mediterranean species.

Diet of this genus is generally composed of bivalves, gastropods and small crustaceans ( Christensen 1970; Ribi et al. 1977; Ventura 1991). Species of the genus Astropecten are used for medicinal purposes in the northeastern Brazil, where the tea of the whole specimen is drunk to treat asthma and cough, to prevent abortion and to reduce menstrual bleeding (Alves & Rosa 2006).