After months of research, scientists have identified the pathogen at the heart of the wasting disease that’s been killing starfish by the millions along the Pacific shores of North America, according to research published Monday.
They said it’s a virus that’s different from all other known viruses infecting marine organisms. They’ve dubbed it “sea star associated densovirus.”
“When you look on a scale of hundreds and hundreds of animals, which we did, it’s very clear that the virus is associated with symptomatic sea stars,” said Ian Hewson, a microbiologist at Cornell University and lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Photo: “Sunflower Star” by Ingrid Taylar under the license CC BY 2.0