{"id":8853,"date":"2020-07-14T12:19:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T02:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/?p=8853"},"modified":"2020-07-14T12:20:31","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T02:20:31","slug":"coral-eating-starfish-juveniles-thrive-in-coral-rubble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/2020\/07\/14\/coral-eating-starfish-juveniles-thrive-in-coral-rubble\/","title":{"rendered":"Coral-eating starfish juveniles thrive in coral rubble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers have recently closed some key knowledge gaps in understanding of the early stages of the coral-eating starfish\u2019s lifecycle.\u00a0Little was previously known of the species\u2019 juvenile life. As part of a coordinated, collaborative research program targeted at filling important gaps in understanding, <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s00338-020-01950-6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>researchers have found<\/strong><\/a> that tiny juvenile starfish tend to be hidden amongst coral rubble and dead coral on the slopes of shallow coral reefs. Here, they eat coralline algae until they switch to a coral-eating diet and grow much larger, threatening live coral cover on reefs that have survived recent bleaching events.\u00a0This work is part of an <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/round-2-projects\/project-2-1-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Integrated Pest Management research program<\/a><\/strong>, which has already revolutionised crown-of-thorns starfish control on the Great Barrier Reef.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo: David Westcott<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Researchers have recently closed some key knowledge gaps in understanding of the early stages of the coral-eating starfish\u2019s lifecycle.\u00a0Little was previously known of the species\u2019 juvenile life. As part of &hellip; <a class=\"kt-excerpt-readmore\" href=\"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/2020\/07\/14\/coral-eating-starfish-juveniles-thrive-in-coral-rubble\/\" aria-label=\"Coral-eating starfish juveniles thrive in coral rubble\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2108,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesptropical.edu.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}