A family of starfish (sea stars) that includes the genus Asterias and related genera, characterized by typically five arms and predatory feeding habits.
From the genus 'Asterias' plus the Latin family suffix '-idae,' which is the standard scientific naming convention in zoology for animal families.
The scientific naming system uses these Latin suffixes so consistently that once you learn the pattern, you can guess that anything ending in '-idae' is a family of animals, making scientific taxonomy a kind of linguistic code that helps scientists worldwide understand each other.
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