Disease-driven mass mortality event leads to widespread extirpation and variable recovery potential of a marine predator across the eastern Pacific ...
Abstract The prevalence of disease-driven mass mortality events is increasing, but our understanding of spatial variation in their magnitude, timing, and triggers are often poorly resolved. Here, we use a novel range-wide dataset comprised of 48,810 surveys to quantify how Sea Star Wasting Disease a...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | unknown |
| Published: |
The University of British Columbia
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0406469 https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0406469 |
| Summary: | Abstract The prevalence of disease-driven mass mortality events is increasing, but our understanding of spatial variation in their magnitude, timing, and triggers are often poorly resolved. Here, we use a novel range-wide dataset comprised of 48,810 surveys to quantify how Sea Star Wasting Disease affected Pycnopodia helianthoides , the sunflower sea star, across its range from Baja California, Mexico to the Aleutian Islands, USA. We found that the outbreak occurred more rapidly, killed a greater percentage of the population, and left fewer survivors in the southern half of the species’ range. Pycnopodia now appears to be functionally extinct (> 99.2% declines) from Baja California, Mexico to Cape Flattery, Washington, USA and exhibited severe declines (> 87.8%) from the Salish Sea to the Gulf of Alaska. The importance of temperature in predicting Pycnopodia distribution rose 450% after the outbreak, suggesting these latitudinal gradients may stem from an interaction between disease severity ... |
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