November 18, 2014 — Scientists have identified a virus that they believe is the mysterious killer that is wiping out starfish along the Pacific coast, but they can’t figure out why it suddenly became so deadly or whether it will continue its reign of destruction.
The pathogen believed responsible for causing millions of sea stars along the coast of California to wither and die was identified as a densovirus, a type of parvovirus, researchers at UC Santa Cruz and Cornell University said Monday.
The disease was found not only in the tissues of its victims, but in brittle stars, which are closely related, and sea urchins. The virus was also in seawater and sediment collected from affected areas, including Santa Cruz and Monterey, according to a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Strangely, the virus was also detected in museum specimens dating back to 1942, meaning the disease has been lurking for decades but only recently turned deadly, said co-author Peter Raimondi, chairman of the ecology and evolutionary biology department at UC Santa Cruz.
The virus wiped out starfish along huge swaths of the coast from Mexico to Alaska starting last year and has recently gone on a rampage through the Olympic Coast, in Washington state.
“What is unresolved is why it is so virulent,” said Raimondi, who leads the Pacific Rocky Intertidal Monitoring Program, which has been documenting the spread of the disease along the West Coast. “This virus has been around for at least 70 years, which brings up the question of why now?”
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