sierracoomer
Phataria unifascialis
This picture was taken during spring break this semester off the coast of Costa Rica near Cano Island in the Pacific Ocean. I think this is a tan starfish (Phataria unifascialis) because of its blue color, five legs, and location in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This sea star was found in shallow water on a small reef where they tend to feed on algae, detritus, and microorganisms.
Not pertaining to this specific sea star but in general, sea stars may be considered as a keystone predator. In 1963, an ecologist named Robert Paine found very large orange and purple sea stars known as Pisaster ochraceus. For the next few years he started to one by one remove the sea stars from the outcrops near a sandy bay. To his surprise he saw a dramatic decrease in biodiversity. This led to the creation of the term keystone predation. Keystone predation by definition is predation that is central to the organization of a community; the predator enhances one or more inferior competitors by reducing the abundance of the superior competitor. In other words, predators regulate ecosystems as Robert Paine had found with the large purple sea stars at the top of the food chain. This species of sea star was eating a lot of mussels. When the sea star was removed the mussels dominated other marine life decreasing biodiversity from 15 species to a monoculture of mussels in only seven years. This ground breaking experiment showed that one predator can regulate the composition of an entire community.
nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-ecologist-who-threw-starf...
www.thatpetplace.com/Phataria-unifascialis-blue-starfish-...
Phataria unifascialis
This picture was taken during spring break this semester off the coast of Costa Rica near Cano Island in the Pacific Ocean. I think this is a tan starfish (Phataria unifascialis) because of its blue color, five legs, and location in the eastern Pacific Ocean. This sea star was found in shallow water on a small reef where they tend to feed on algae, detritus, and microorganisms.
Not pertaining to this specific sea star but in general, sea stars may be considered as a keystone predator. In 1963, an ecologist named Robert Paine found very large orange and purple sea stars known as Pisaster ochraceus. For the next few years he started to one by one remove the sea stars from the outcrops near a sandy bay. To his surprise he saw a dramatic decrease in biodiversity. This led to the creation of the term keystone predation. Keystone predation by definition is predation that is central to the organization of a community; the predator enhances one or more inferior competitors by reducing the abundance of the superior competitor. In other words, predators regulate ecosystems as Robert Paine had found with the large purple sea stars at the top of the food chain. This species of sea star was eating a lot of mussels. When the sea star was removed the mussels dominated other marine life decreasing biodiversity from 15 species to a monoculture of mussels in only seven years. This ground breaking experiment showed that one predator can regulate the composition of an entire community.
nautil.us/issue/37/currents/the-ecologist-who-threw-starf...
www.thatpetplace.com/Phataria-unifascialis-blue-starfish-...