Echinus acutus is a species of sea urchin

Sea urchin

Sea urchins or urchins are small, spiny, globular animals which, with their close kin, such as sand dollars, constitute the class Echinoidea of the echinoderm phylum. They inhabit all oceans. Their shell, or "test", is round and spiny, typically from across. Common colors include black and dull...

 in the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

 Echinidae

Echinidae

Echinidae is a family of sea urchins in the order Echinoida. Members of the family are found in the Atlantic Ocean and the Antarctic.-Characteristics:...

, commonly known as the white sea urchin. It is an omnivore

Omnivore

Omnivores are species that eat both plants and animals as their primary food source...

 and feeds on algae

Algae

Algae are a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelps that grow to 65 meters in length. They are photosynthetic like plants, and "simple" because their tissues are not organized into the many...

 and small invertebrate

Invertebrate

An invertebrate is an animal without a backbone. The group includes 97% of all animal species – all animals except those in the chordate subphylum Vertebrata .Invertebrates form a paraphyletic group...

s.

Description

The white sea urchin grows to a diameter of 15 centimetres. The test

Test (biology)

A test is a term used to refer to the shell of sea urchins, and also the shell of certain microorganisms, such as testate foraminifera and testate amoebae....

 is circular in cross section but rises conically to the apex. it is reddish-brown or occasionally green with white stripes on the ambulacra. Spine cover is sparse. The primary spines are long and tapering while the secondaries are short. There are many pedicellariae round the mouth.

Distribution

The white sea urchin is found in the eastern Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

, the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

, the North Sea

North Sea

In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

 and the English Channel

English Channel

The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...

at depths of up to 100 metres on coarse substrates with mud and gravel.