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The purple sea urchin, along with sea otters and abalones, is a prominent member of the kelp forest community. [18] The purple sea urchin also plays a key role in the disappearance of kelp forests that is currently occurring due to climate change; [19] when urchins completely eliminate kelp from an area, an urchin barren results.
The star fish is the main purple urchin predator. ... Some believe the only way to restore kelp is to reduce the purple urchins, which can go dormant for years only to remerge and eat new kelp ...
If Purple Sea Urchins eat all the kelp, other herbivores will die of starvation, and Paralabrax clathratus will surely follow, as they cannot ingest the urchins due to their spiny exteriors. [18] Another invasive species along the coast of California and Baja is wreaking havoc on Kelp Bass “recruitment,” which is when newly settled ...
For example, mechanical dredging of kelp destroys the resource and dependent fisheries. Other forces also threaten some seaweed ecosystems; for example, a wasting disease in predators of purple urchins has led to an urchin population surge which has destroyed large kelp forest regions off the coast of California. [4]
The species is a smaller and shorter-spined cousin of the purple urchins devouring kelp forests. They produce massive numbers of sperm and eggs that fertilize outside of their bodies, allowing ...
Kelp forests provide important habitats for many fish species, sea otters and sea urchins. Directly and indirectly, marine coastal ecosystems provide vast arrays of ecosystem services for humans, such as cycling nutrients and elements , and purifying water by filtering pollutants.
An urchin barren is commonly defined as an urchin-dominated area with little or no kelp. Urchin grazing pressure on kelp is a direct and observable cause of a "barren" area. However, determining which factors contribute to shifting a kelp bed to an urchin barren is a complex problem and remains a matter of debate among scientists.
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