Echinoderm is the common name given to any member of the phylum Echinodermata of marine animals. You can recognize mature Echinoderms by their radial symmetry, which includes common animals such as sea stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers and sea lilies. You can find Echinoderms at every depth of the ocean, from the intertidal zone to the abyssal zone. The phylum contains about 7000 living species, making it the second-largest grouping of deuterostomes (a superphylum), after the chordates (which include the vertebrates, such as birds, fishes, mammals, and reptiles).

The species is distributed throughout a wide range of habitats such as sandy ocean floors or coral reefs. They are found in the waters of Aleutian Islands, Alaska to California on substrates such as mud, sand, gravel, boulders, and rock.

With its impeccable speed and ability to thrive in a wide range of habitats, the Sunflower Sea Star is without a doubt a powerful predator.

The Sunflower Star is a fast and aggressive predator that eats smaller echinoderms. It commonly feeds on crabs, sea cucumbers, snails, chitons, sea urchins, dead or dying squid and other sea stars. To capture prey that are smaller echinoderms, it utilizes its 15,000 tube feet as traps.

The autotomy (dropping its arm when disturbed or injured by a predator) allows the sunflower star to escape from the predator. If, in fact, they are threatened and physically injured, they have the capability to regenerate their arms. It is also possible for an entirely new sea star to form if the detached arm has a portion of the central disk. If a predator attacks, the sea star can detach itself from its arm and emit a chemical that signals a warning to neighboring sea stars.

This species breeds by broadcast fertilization between March and July, particularly in May and June. The eggs will develop into swimming bilateral larvae which will remain in plankton for, at most, 10 weeks. The larval form will feed on single-celled plants and when it finally settles, it metamorphoses into a young sea start with five arms. It will grow arms clockwise from the bivium and in pairs bilaterally. This species's life expectancy is between three to five years.

Sea urchins are important to the ecosystem because they are grazers. They are particularly important to the reef ecosystem because they limit the size of macro-algae populations. Why that matters is because when algae populations become too large, they take away from essential nutrients coral need to survive. It would also make it difficult for coral to rebound after a time of distress, so the presence of urchins increases the likelihood that the reefs will not be eliminated as a result of diminished resources or environmental occurrences such as coral bleaching.

One of the adaptations of sea urchins is that they are able to move their spines. They are able to orient them in the direction of a particular stimulus, whether it be in defense from a predator or in capturing food. Either way, this adaptation gives the sea urchin a greater likelihood to survive.