Billions of stars died in a pandemic for a decade. Scientists say they now know the reason.

Scientists say they have finally replaced the mystery of more than 5 billion naval stars often known as Starfish-off the Pacific coast of North America in a decade of time.

Starting in 2013, the mysterious sea star Wasting the disease Group from Mexico to Alaska. The epidemic has destroyed more than 20 species and continues today. The worst success was a type called The star of the sea is sunflowerWhich lost about 90 % of its population in the first five years in fascism.

“It is really great,” said the Navy environment scientist Alyssa Jiman at the Hakai Institute in British Columbia, Canada, who helped determine the case.

She said that the healthy sea stars have “swollen arms clinging to directly.” But waste disease makes them grow pests and “then drop their arms.”

The perpetrator? Bacteria that hit oysters, according to Ticket The two were published in the Journal of Nature Environment and Development.

“The results” solved a long -term question about a very serious disease in the ocean. “Said Santa Barbara, who did not participate in the study.

Sea stars usually have five weapons and some species of 24 cubits. It ranges in colors from solid orange to orange, purple, brown and green tissue.

“Symptoms of the stars of the sea wasting include abnormally twisted arms, white pests, weapons and body shrinkage, arm loss, and disintegration of the body.” National Park Service says. “They die for days or weeks.”

It took more than a decade for researchers to determine the cause of the disease, with many wrong threads, shifts and turns along the way.

Melanie Bernitis of the Hakai Institute, the co -author of the new study, said that early research hinted that the reason may be a virus, but it turned out that the generous viruses that scientists focused on at first was actually an ordinary resident within the health stars and not linked to the disease.

Other efforts were absent from the real killer because the researchers studied tissue samples from the dead sea stars that no longer contain the physical fluid surrounding the organs.

But the latest study includes a detailed analysis of this liquid, called the common liquid, where the vibrio pectenicida bacteria were found.

“It is extremely difficult to follow the source of many environmental diseases, especially underwater,” said Blake Oshjeima of the University of North Carolina, Welmengton, who has not participated in the research. He said that the discussion by this team was “really smart and important.”

Now that scientists knew the reason, they have a better snapshot in intervention to help sea stars. The International Conservation Federation was included Extinction.

Bernetis said that scientists can now test any of the remaining sea stars who are still healthy – and think about their transportation, or generate them in captivity to grow them later to the areas that have lost almost all sea stars in sunflower.

The study indicates that Vibrio bacteria has been called the “microbial barometer scale for climate change” because the species are more prevalent in warming water temperatures. The authors say that the next important stage of the research is to work on a better understanding of the relationship between high levels of sea water and the waste of stars in the sea.

Scientists may also test whether some population suffers from natural immunity, and if treatments such as probiotics may help enhance the immunity of the disease.

The researchers say that the work of recovery is not only important for the stars of the sea, but for the ecosystems in the entire Pacific because the sound star of the sea will spare excess seaws.

Gehman said, “Sunflower SEA” looks innocent when you see them, but they eat everything that lives at the bottom of the ocean. “They are east.”

With fewer sea stars, sea canals that usually explode in the population – and thus increased about 95 % of the sea herbal forests in northern California during a decade. Sea Forest provides this food and habitats for a wide range of animals, including fish, marine foxes, and seals.

The researchers hope that the new results will allow them to restore the residents of Sea Star – and to reorganize the sea herbal forests that compare Thurber to the “ocean rain forests”.