Starlet sea anemone

The starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis, is a small sea anemone of the family Edwardsiidae in the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. It is native to the east coast of the United States, with introduced populations in southeast England and on the west coast of the United States, and lives in shallow brackish coastal lagoons and salt marsh pools, usually buried in fine mud or sand with only its crown of tentacles exposed. The translucent column ranges from less than 2 to 6 centimetres long and carries typically fourteen, sometimes up to twenty, slender tentacles in two rings. It feeds on small crustaceans, molluscs, worms and egg masses, and reproduces both sexually and asexually, by fission or budding in some populations. Its genome has been sequenced, and it is widely reared in laboratories as a model organism for evolutionary, developmental and genomic research. The IUCN has listed it as Vulnerable in the wild.