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Lab experiments showed that sea stars, known scientifically as Pycnopodia helianthoides, consume urchins at rates sufficient to maintain and perhaps reset the health of kelp forests.
In Northern California, purple sea urchins are decimating kelp forests. Though the species of urchin causing problems may vary by region, the damage is the same. NNehring/iStock This article is ...
These urchin-eating sea stars might be helping us reduce carbon levels The 24-armed sunflower sea star is not a picky eater, which may makes it crucial to restoring kelp forests.
Other important predators of purple sea urchins, such as sea otters, are generally known to avoid eating starving urchins from "barrens" -- massive underwater carpets of urchins that have devoured ...
Key takeawaysKelp forests play an important role in healthy coastal ecosystems, but they prefer cold water and die off if the ...
These 24-armed, roughly 3-feet-wide sea stars can move 40 inches per minute when on the prowl for crabs, snails, sea urchins, and other ocean creatures to eat.
Billions of sea stars have wasted away in recent years, their crustose, spiny bodies melted to goop by a mysterious illness ...
Each morning, they boat out to kelp forests to study the relationship between sea urchins that eat kelp and sunflower sea stars that eat the urchins.
The study found sunflower sea stars eat kelp-eating urchins at rates sufficient enough to maintain and potentially reset the health of kelp forests.
Purple sea urchins, beware: There’s a purple urchin-eating predator on the horizon — and its name is the sunflower sea star.
Sunflower sea stars — recently decimated from the ocean off western Mexico, California, Oregon and Washington — are like wolves of the kelp forest, eating sea urchins that will overgraze if ...