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Crown-of-Thorns Starfish 'Cockroach of the Ocean' and Much More Resilient Than Previously Thought

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday July 25 2020, @07:34PM   

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for RandomFactor:

i thought it was lobsters

Crown-of-thorns starfish 'cockroach of the ocean' and much more resilient than previously thought - ABC News:

It's hard to comprehend the destruction this ethereal creature could do in its lifetime — a juvenile crown-of-thorns starfish, raised in a lab where researchers have discovered worrying new findings about its progression into adulthood.

Research published today from the University of Sydney and Southern Cross University's National Marine Science Centre in Coffs Harbour has found the crown-of-thorns starfish will eat a much more varied diet as juveniles than previously thought, making them worryingly resilient.

As juveniles the crown-of-thorns starfish are vegetarian, favouring a particular type of algae.

But the study found they they would eat much more in order to survive.

"We initially thought that they only ate crustose coralline algae but we found that they can also eat biofilm, which is a mixture of diatoms, bacteria, and other microorganisms that grow pretty much everywhere in the ocean," Dr Mos said.

The findings offer a significant change in thought on the life cycle of the crown-of-thorns starfish, and raises the spectre of it being a much more dangerous predator.

Journal Reference:
Dione J. Deaker, Benjamin Mos, Huang-An Lin, et al. Diet flexibility and growth of the early herbivorous juvenile crown-of-thorns sea star, implications for its boom-bust population dynamics, PLOS ONE (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236142)

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Original Submission

• I thought the bees were disappearing I thought the bees were disappearing (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Zinnia Zirconium on Saturday July 25 2020, @07:42PM (1 child)

  by Zinnia Zirconium (11163) on Saturday July 25 2020, @07:42PM (#1026235) Homepage Journal

  Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals who dominated the world through age after age. They ran and they swam and they fought and they flew. Until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start again.

  With the bees probably.

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• Re:I thought the bees were disappearing (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @07:45PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 25 2020, @07:45PM (#1026238)

  Do you actually have anything coherent to say? That screed didn't make one bit of sense, you stupid nigger. This is about starfish, not bees, dumbfuck.

  Parent