ArticleEmerging topics in life sciences2022
Crown of thorns starfish life-history traits contribute to outbreaks, a continuing concern for coral reefs.
Article in Emerging topics in life sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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14 citing papers in PubMed, 51 citations in OpenAlex.
- Warming but not Food Limitation Alters Metabolism During Larval Development in Crown-of-Thorns Sea Stars (Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
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- Rates of Spawning and Mortality Using Contrasting Methods for Culling Pacific Crown-of-Thorns Starfish,Biology · 2025Article
- Genetic Evidence of Multiple and Diverse Range Expansion Events From an Outbreak of the Crown-of-Thorns Seastar,Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Starvation Influences the Microbiota in the Stomach of the Corallivorous Crown-of-Thorns Starfish.Biology · 2025Article
- Distribution Shifts ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Crown-of-thorns starfish complete their larval phase eating only nitrogen-fixingScience advances · 2024Article
- Seasonal tissue-specific gene expression in wild crown-of-thorns starfish reveals reproductive and stress-related transcriptional systems.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Chemosensory behaviour of juvenile crown-of-thorns sea star (Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Consequences of kelp forest ecosystem shifts and predictors of persistence through multiple stressors.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- High germline mutation rates, but not extreme population outbreaks, influence genetic diversity in a keystone coral predator.PLoS genetics · 2024Article
- Induction of larval settlement in crown-of-thorns starfish is not mediated by conspecific cues.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Settlement cue selectivity by larvae of the destructive crown-of-thorns starfish.Biology letters · 2023Article
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2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Crown of thorns starfish (COTS, Acanthaster sp.) are notorious for their destructive consumption of coral that decimates tropical reefs, an attribute unique among tropical marine invertebrates. Their populations can rapidly increase from 0-1 COTS ha-1 to more than 10-1000 COTS ha-1 in short order causing a drastic change to benthic communities and reducing the functional and species diversity of coral reef ecosystems. Population outbreaks were first identified to be a significant threat to coral reefs in the 1960s. Since then, they have become one of the leading causes of coral loss along with coral bleaching. Decades of research and significant investment in Australia and elsewhere, particularly Japan, have been directed towards identifying, understanding, and managing the potential causes of outbreaks and designing population control methods. Despite this, the drivers of outbreaks remain elusive. What is becoming increasingly clear is that the success of COTS is tied to their inherent biological traits, especially in early life. Survival of larval and juvenile COTS is likely to be enhanced by their dietary flexibility and resilience to variable food conditions as well as their phenotypically plastic growth dynamics, all magnified by the extreme reproductive potential of COTS. These traits enable COTS to capitalise on anthropogenic disturbances to reef systems as well as endure less favourable conditions.
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