The upper surface of the disc and arms is clad in longitudinal rows of calcified plates called ossicles, and in paxillae, pillar-like spines with flattened summits covered with minute spinules.

[3] L. clathrata is found around the coastlines of the western Atlantic Ocean, from Virginia south to Brazil, the Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico.

[3] A study on the regenerative capacity of L. clathrata found that increased ocean acidification, as is likely to happen under global warming, had no significant effect on the starfish's ability to regenerate its limbs.

[3][5] At other times, it feeds by ingesting sediment and straining the material through spines around its mouth, extracting food particles in the process.

The larvae pass through a planktonic bipinnaria stage, which lasts about a month before settling on the seabed, undergoing metamorphosis, and becoming juvenile starfish.