Sea stars may not intimidate us humans, but to a population of sea urchins, they’re a formidable predator.
“They basically throw their stomachs out, they lift up their arms, and then part of their stomach from the underside is thrown out,” Sridhar said. “And then they engulf the urchin.”
The sea star in her hands shows recent evidence of such grisly events — its stomach protrudes out of its body, and crushed urchin spines dot its many arms. While unfortunate for the urchin, this kind of predation is good for the ecosystem. Urchins eat kelp, and too many urchins can decimate kelp forests that“They’re like skyscrapers that create homes for all these different animals,” Sridhar said.
Keeping kelp forests healthy requires a balance of kelp-eating ‘grazers’, like urchins and abalone, and predators – like sea stars – who eat the grazers. “If you lose one part of this puzzle – for example, you lose an important predator – then you might have too many grazers,” Sridhar said.
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