The epidemic will have lasted ten years. A decade during which scientists tried to unravel the mystery of a disease that affects the sea star on the Pacific coast of North America. Five billion would have been decimated during this epidemic, which devastated more than twenty species and caused a massive extinction.
“It’s really horrible,” said Alyssa Gehman, an environmentalist specialized in marine diseases at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia in Canada, who helped identify the cause. This mysterious disease was discovered in 2013 and affects the “arms” of the sea star and causes its fall.
In question: a bacterium that has infected many shells, concludes a study published on Monday, August 4 in the British scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Jet ecosystem
“It is incredibly difficult to return to the origin of so many environmental diseases, especially underwater,” said Microbiologist Blake Ushijima of the University of North Carolina, commenting on this new study, which describes the work of “really intelligent and significant scientists.”
Once this bacterium has been identified, scientists hope to fight the disease and, therefore, save the sea star. Its disappearance, in particular that of the star of sunflower star, calculated, calls into question the balance of the seabed ecosystem, this species regulating others, such as sea urchins.
Without predators, sea urchins devoured in a decade around 95% of the VARECH forest in northern California, which serves as a pantry for many other maritime species: fish, sea otter or seals.
Source: BFM TV
