Scientists Solve Mystery Behind Epidemic Of Starfish Deaths

Washington (AP) – Scientists finally say that they have solved the mystery of things that kill more than 5 billion Sea Stars On the Pacific Coast of North America Ten -year epidemic.

Sea Stars – Usually known as the starfish – typically has five branches and some species do sports up to 24 cola. They are in color from solid orange to orange, purple, brown and green carpets.

Starting from 2013, a mysterious sea star disease led to a mass death from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has ruined more than 20 species and continues today. The worst hit was a species called sunflower star star, which lost about 90% of its population in the first five years of the outbreak.

Alyssa Gehman, a maritime disease, said, “This is really terrible,” he said at the Righteous Institute of Canada’s British Kolumbi.

Healthy sea stars, “fluffy arms go out directly,” he said. However, waste disease causes them to grow lesions and “then their arms actually fall”.

Is he guilty? According to a study, bacteria infected with shellfish seafood Published on Monday In Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The findings, “a very serious illness in the ocean is solving a long -standing question,” he said.

It took more than a decade to identify the cause of the disease, many wrong clues and twisting and returning along the road.

Early research implied that the cause could be a virus, but Melanie Prendice, the Joint Author of the new study, was found to be a normal settled in healthy maritime stars and was not associated with illness.

Other efforts missed the real killer because the researchers have now examined the texture of the tissue of the dead sea stars that no longer contain the physical fluid surrounding the organs.

However, the last study includes a detailed analysis of this fluid called the coelomic fluid with bacteria of Vibrio Pectoist.

“Many environmental illnesses, especially underwater, are incredibly difficult to follow the source of many environmental illnesses, Bol said Blake Ushijima, a microbiologist from Wilmington, the University of North Carolina, who was not involved in the research. He said that this team’s detective work was “really smart and important ..

Since scientists know why, they are doing a better shot to intervene to help the sea stars.

Prentice said that scientists can test which of the potentially remaining marine stars are still healthy, and that they would reproduce in captivity to those who lose sunflower sea stars later.

Scientists can also test whether some populations have natural immunity and test that treatments such as probiotics can help increase immunity to the disease.

Researchers are important not only for marine stars, but also for all pacific ecosystems, because the healthy starfish set up more sea chestnuts.

Sunflower Sea Stars, “When you see them, look some kind of innocent, but they eat almost everything living at the bottom of the ocean, Gehman said Gehman. “They are glutter.”

With many less sea stars, the sea chestnuts in which they usually explode in the population – and Kelp Forest In North California in ten years. This provides food and habitat for a wide variety of animals, including algae forests, fish, sea otter and seals.

Researchers hopes that new findings will restore the sea -star populations of the new findings and allow Thurber to re -enlarge the seaweed forests compared to the ocean’s rainforests ”.

The Associated Press Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Institute of Medicine Department of Science Education and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. AP is only responsible for all content.