In 2021 we were contacted by Bethan Lang who was undertaking a research project into the Crown of Thorns Starfish (CoTS) on the Great Barrier Reef. Her aim was to determine how ocean warming impacts the ability for CoTS larvae to successfully settle on the reef and then grow into coral-feeding predators. We were delighted to support her research and we are even more delighted to announce that the results of her project have now been published in ‘Coral Reefs’, the journal of the International Coral Reef Society.
You can read the full report online in the open access publication and it is really interesting. Her research found that CoTS larvae were adversely impacted by the increasing temperatures and survival rate decreased. While the inevitable increasing sea temperatures are not good for the marine environment in general the result does, “Add to the growing body of evidence indicating that near-future ocean warming will ultimately lead to an abatement in the incidence or severity of population irruptions of CoTS, which could alleviate predation pressure on important reef-building corals.”
We want to thank Bethan for her hard work and wish her the best with her future research.
