Carnivore seastars tie with polar bears as top predators of Artic, study finds – National | 24CA News

On the Arctic sea ground lie hungry predators that may eat polar bears.

The voracious carnivores are seastars, higher often known as starfish, and a brand new examine by a nationwide analysis group says they tie with polar bears as the highest predators of the Arctic marine ecosystem.

Co-author Remi Amiraux, a post-doctoral fellow on the University of Manitoba, mentioned sea ground, or benthic, organisms aren’t generally studied as a result of they’re usually assumed to be decrease on the meals chain.

But the examine printed final month within the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences discovered that the ocean ground consists of organisms throughout the entire vary of the meals chain.

Seastars inside the Pterasteridae household sat on the high, with the examine dubbing them “the benthic equivalent to polar bears.”

“It’s a shift in our view of how the coastal Arctic marine food web works,” Amiraux mentioned in an interview.

He mentioned that invertebrates, or creatures with out backbones, dwelling in sediment on the Arctic sea ground didn’t simply encompass plant-eating herbivores.

“You have a whole food web, including primary predators, herbivores and many carnivores. So it’s way more complex than what we thought,” Amiraux mentioned.

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The examine’s authors say “megafaunal-predatory” Pterasteridae seastars thrive on this realm “because of their evolved defence mechanism associated with a diet of other predators, including marine mammal carcasses that settle onto the ocean floor.”

Amiraux mentioned that whereas polar bears don’t eat starfish, “the opposite is quite true.”

“Actually, when a polar bear dies, it can be eaten by carnivore seastars,” Amiraux mentioned.

The researchers examined 1,580 samples from wildlife round Nunavut’s Southampton Island in Hudson Bay to know how the ecosystem capabilities and assist governing our bodies defend and preserve marine life within the space.

The Southampton Island area has been recognized as an space of curiosity for Marine Protected Area designation by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Amiraux mentioned meals webs present perception into ecosystem functioning.

He famous that although the examine targeted on an space within the Arctic, starfish are discovered worldwide, so it’s possible that “there is the same structure or the same food web everywhere on the sea floor.”

“I don’t think it’s a special feature of the coastal environment,” he mentioned. “We pretty much will be able to see that in all environments.”

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