Long-spined sea urchins began to rapidly die off in the Caribbean last year. Now, researchers say they've found the killer.
Mya Breitbart/USF College of Marine Science
Among other things, Breitbart and her team had access to urchin samples from over 20 sites. Microscopic and genetic analysis then revealed the presence of the ciliate in affected animals. Ciliates are a broad group of free-living protists characterized by the cilia that they use to move.They were also a bit lucky, Breitbart said, because they were able to isolate the ciliates found in sick urchins and successfully grow them in the lab.
These experiments are the same sort of detective work used to prove that a suspected germ causes disease in humans or land-dwelling animals, but they are typically much harder to do with sea life, Breitbart said. “This process, known as Koch’s postulates, is rarely achieved for marine diseases and is an accomplishment we are especially proud of.
“Based on the 1980’s die-off, we expect that the loss of these urchins in the 2022 event will lead to algal overgrowth on affected coral reefs, with wide-reaching effects for the ecosystem,” Breibart said.There are a few silver linings. The outbreaks seem to have stopped since last fall and winter, according to Breitbart. There’s also no evidence that other urchin or marine species have been directly affected by the ciliates.
At the same time, many questions remain. The species of ciliate identified by the scientists belongs to a group known as scuticociliates, some of which have been known to cause disease in other marine animals, including sharks. And given the eerie similarity between last year’s die-off and the one in the 1980s, this species might be a sea urchin serial killer. But it’s not known how these outbreaks were sparked or even how the disease spread so quickly.
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