Science
Crown-of-Thorns Starfish Have a Diet Trick to Enhance Their Growth – SciTechDaily
Crown-of-thorns starfish are renowned for eating coral and destroying coral reefs — but when juvenile crown-of-thorns first settle in reef environments they start out by eating rock-hard coralline algae. In a new study, Jennifer Wilmes and her colleagues comp…
Early stage herbivorous crown-of-thorns starfish camouflaged against the coralline algae that it has been feeding on, with a recent feeding scar directly adjacent. Credit: Daniel J. Schultz
Crown-of-thorns starfish are renowned for eating coral and destroying coral reefs — but when juvenile crown-of-thorns first settle in reef environments they start out by eating rock-hard coralline algae. In a new study, Jennifer Wilmes and her colleagues compared the growth between juvenile crown-of-thorns s…
