Has the Term 'Keystone Species' Lost Its Meaning? Story by Lesley Evans Ogden, ... Among the tide pools of this isolated island, Salomon peered at the web of life on the rocks: ochre sea stars ...

Americans are skeptical of the term environmentalist, so a new report from the aquarium deals with ‘wonder and respect and ...

In contrast, keystone species have effects on communities that ... Reduction of attractiveness to the sea star Asterias forbesi (Desor) by the clam Mercenaria mercenaria (Linnaeus).

Bringing back sunflower sea stars, which are functionally extinct in California, could help restore kelp forests off the coast, researchers say.

MOSS LANDING — Sunflower sea stars are nearly extinct in Monterey ... lab staff have been able to research more about these ...

Year round this same species can be found all along the West Coast, from Baja California to Alaska. But in 2014, a disease nearly brought them to extinction here.

Starfish are a keystone species and had kept populations of sea urchins in check, which in turn allowed kelp forests to grow. The sunflower stars are voracious predators, eating most things living on ...

1993). There are a number of other well-described examples where keystone species act as determinate predators. Sea otters (i) regulate sea urchin populations, which in turn feed upon kelp and ...

SAN FRANCISCO— Responding to a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Marine Fisheries Service proposed today to protect imperiled sunflower sea stars as threatened under the ...

A new study suggests that cold-water fjords on British Columbia’s Central Coast could be a marine refuge for threatened sunflower sea stars, which have been hit hard by sea star wasting disease. But ...

Without sea stars to balance the food web ... Researchers are galvanized by the high stakes. If the keystone species puts a check on urchins, allowing kelp forests to heal, we could recover ...