From the different populations, 79 starfish were col-lected from locations in the Red Sea and the Mediter-ranean Sea (Fig.The relationship amongthe starfish was analyzed using parsimony analysis(PAUP program), in which only phylogenetically infor-mative characters are used to construct the shortesttree, by stepwise addition of taxa and characters.Allthe primers yielded the same band patterns in all thespecimens from the Mediterranean Sea, while differ-ent patterns were displayed in the populations fromthe Red Sea.All of the 185 bands scored (100%) werepolymorphic among the 32 specimens from Elat, whileonly 4.6% appeared to be polymorphic among the 47specimens taken from the Mediterranean Sea.3 compares RAPDpatterns obtained from the fissiparous starfish fromthe Mediterranean (Fig. 3B) usinganother primer. 1).