mick silver
4th January 2014, 02:19 PM
Mysterious Disease Turns Sea Stars to Goo, Disrupts EcosystemsBy James Smith (http://www.prepperpodcast.com/author/james-smith/) on November 11, 2013
[I][I][I]http://www.prepperpodcast.com/wp-content/themes/_stylebook/timthumb.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prepperpodcast.c om%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fzemanta%2F575x453_11091414_was ting_disease.jpg&q=90&w=795&zc=1By Laura Poppick, AccuWeather Staff Writer
11/9/2013
A mysterious disease that has turned hundreds of starfish into limp lumps of goo along both the East and West coasts in recent months could potentially induce a cascade of other ecological effects in tidal systems, researchers say.
The disease – known as sea star wasting syndrome – begins as a small lesion, and eventually results in the loss of limbs and ultimate disintegration (http://www.livescience.com/2914-global-warming-costs-starfish-arm-leg.html) and death of the leggy animal. The cause of the disease remains unknown to researchers, who have not been able to determine if it is related to a bacterial infection, a virus or a combination of effects worsened by environmental stressors, such as increased water (http://www.prepperpodcast.com/disaster-preparedness/water/) temperature.
The syndrome has afflicted sea star populations on the West Coast in the past, and in those instances, populations eventually bounced back, Smithsonian invertebrate zoologist Christopher Mah told LiveScience. But this current episode appears more severe than previous cases, killing up to 95 percent of some populations consisting of hundreds of individuals, The Associated Press reported (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/environment&id=9311972) earlier this week. [The 5 Most Mysterious Animal Die-Offs (http://www.livescience.com/41041-mysterious-animal-die-offs.html)]
“We’ve never seen it at this scale up and down the coast,” Pete Raimondi, a professor of ecology at the University of California Santa Cruz involved in tracking the disease, said in a statement on Tuesday (Nov. 5).
http://www.prepperpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/zemanta/575x453_11091414_wasting_disease.jpgTissue is disintegrating within this sea star affected by sea star wasting syndrome. Credit: Melissa Miner
Rippling effects of die-off
Since June, researchers have seen the disease spread from as far as British Columbia, Canada, down through California and, within the past year, from Maine through New Jersey. The scientists tracking the disease find this simultaneous bicoastal infection especially alarming.
“There is no direct route to get from Providence to Seattle,” Gary Wessel, a molecular biologist at Brown University who is working to identify the agent causing the disease, told LiveScience. “So we don’t know how the pathogen would be doing this.”
Researchers do not think the disease has spread to other marine animals, but other animals will still feel the impact of the starfish decimation, Mah said. Starfish (http://www.livescience.com/13990-starfish-juvenile-stage-armless.html) are one of the most common animals in coastal tide pools and other shallow nearshore ecosystems, and some species, such as the West Coast’s ochre sea star ([I]Pisaster ochraceus) and sunflower sea star (Pycnopodia helianthoides) – the largest sea star on Earth – are considered keystone species. This means that, without them, the structure of their ecosystems (http://www.livescience.com/topics/ecosystem/) crumbles, as would an arch without the support of its top-center keystone.
Continue reading at Mysterious Disease Turns Sea Stars to Goo, Disrupts Ecosystems – Outdoor – AccuWeather.com (http://www.accuweather.com/en/outdoor-articles/beach-marine/mysterious-disease-turning-sea/19759650).
[I][I][I]http://www.prepperpodcast.com/wp-content/themes/_stylebook/timthumb.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.prepperpodcast.c om%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fzemanta%2F575x453_11091414_was ting_disease.jpg&q=90&w=795&zc=1By Laura Poppick, AccuWeather Staff Writer
11/9/2013
A mysterious disease that has turned hundreds of starfish into limp lumps of goo along both the East and West coasts in recent months could potentially induce a cascade of other ecological effects in tidal systems, researchers say.
The disease – known as sea star wasting syndrome – begins as a small lesion, and eventually results in the loss of limbs and ultimate disintegration (http://www.livescience.com/2914-global-warming-costs-starfish-arm-leg.html) and death of the leggy animal. The cause of the disease remains unknown to researchers, who have not been able to determine if it is related to a bacterial infection, a virus or a combination of effects worsened by environmental stressors, such as increased water (http://www.prepperpodcast.com/disaster-preparedness/water/) temperature.
The syndrome has afflicted sea star populations on the West Coast in the past, and in those instances, populations eventually bounced back, Smithsonian invertebrate zoologist Christopher Mah told LiveScience. But this current episode appears more severe than previous cases, killing up to 95 percent of some populations consisting of hundreds of individuals, The Associated Press reported (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/environment&id=9311972) earlier this week. [The 5 Most Mysterious Animal Die-Offs (http://www.livescience.com/41041-mysterious-animal-die-offs.html)]
“We’ve never seen it at this scale up and down the coast,” Pete Raimondi, a professor of ecology at the University of California Santa Cruz involved in tracking the disease, said in a statement on Tuesday (Nov. 5).
http://www.prepperpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/zemanta/575x453_11091414_wasting_disease.jpgTissue is disintegrating within this sea star affected by sea star wasting syndrome. Credit: Melissa Miner
Rippling effects of die-off
Since June, researchers have seen the disease spread from as far as British Columbia, Canada, down through California and, within the past year, from Maine through New Jersey. The scientists tracking the disease find this simultaneous bicoastal infection especially alarming.
“There is no direct route to get from Providence to Seattle,” Gary Wessel, a molecular biologist at Brown University who is working to identify the agent causing the disease, told LiveScience. “So we don’t know how the pathogen would be doing this.”
Researchers do not think the disease has spread to other marine animals, but other animals will still feel the impact of the starfish decimation, Mah said. Starfish (http://www.livescience.com/13990-starfish-juvenile-stage-armless.html) are one of the most common animals in coastal tide pools and other shallow nearshore ecosystems, and some species, such as the West Coast’s ochre sea star ([I]Pisaster ochraceus) and sunflower sea star (Pycnopodia helianthoides) – the largest sea star on Earth – are considered keystone species. This means that, without them, the structure of their ecosystems (http://www.livescience.com/topics/ecosystem/) crumbles, as would an arch without the support of its top-center keystone.
Continue reading at Mysterious Disease Turns Sea Stars to Goo, Disrupts Ecosystems – Outdoor – AccuWeather.com (http://www.accuweather.com/en/outdoor-articles/beach-marine/mysterious-disease-turning-sea/19759650).