Scientists have solved the mystery of what killed over 5 billion sea stars — also known as starfish — off the Pacific coast of North America.

Scientists say they have at last solved the mystery of what killed more than 5 billion sea stars off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade-long epidemic.

The culprit? Bacteria that has also infected shellfish, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Now that scientists know the cause, they have a better shot at intervening to help sea stars.

Prentice said that scientists could potentially now test which of the remaining sea stars are still healthy — and consider whether to relocate them, or breed them in captivity to later transplant them to areas that have lost almost all their sunflower sea stars.

  • P00ptart@lemmy.world
    01·
    2 days ago

    True but it’s also not that simple either. Climate change includes things like random mutations of bacteria or viruses. And it may not just be climate change, it could be that microplastics lower their autoimmune abilities. It’s the omni-crisis. We have SO MANY ways our civilization could die. And with that, most of our species. So, so many. And as one worsens, the other gets more tense. Like Jenga or dominoes. Not the game, but the shitty pizza chain (cheap shot, I know). I mean PFAs, microplastics, nano plastics, temperature and climate change, rising sea levels, acidification, the mental damages due to additional CO2 and heat, any one of these could take down civilization, and I know I’m missing some, like the rising threat of fascism. But all of these issues are coming up all at once, and many of them are interwined. But almost all of them tie back to the industrial revolution.