Before 2013, divers on North America's west coast rarely saw purple sea urchins. The spiky animals, which are voracious kelp eaters, were a favorite food of the coast's iconic sunflower sea stars. The ...

For about a decade now, sea stars have been dying at extraordinary rates. They’re being killed by something aptly dubbed “sea star wasting disease” because they quite literally waste away into a ...

In Nature Ecology & Evolution, a group of researchers reveal the cause of sea star wasting disease (SSWD). This discovery comes more than a decade after the start of the marine epidemic that has ...

A mysterious marine epidemic has erased billions of sea stars from North America’s Pacific coast. After more than a decade of unanswered questions, scientists have traced the disaster to a single ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Rebecca Vega Thurber, University of California, Santa Barbara (THE CONVERSATION) ...