A starfish and a mountain lion walk into a bar: A look at the dark side

By Don Molde

Sixty years ago, an ecology professor from the University of Washington traveled to the Washington coastline to conduct a simple yet revealing experiment.

He selected two separate distinct rocky patches of coastline with common characteristics. Each patch contained a similar mixture of marine organisms, ranging from limpets, snails, and mussel up to and including an orange starfish, the primary (or apex) species of that small ecosystem.

Using one of the two rocky patches as the experimental platform and the other as the control, the professor made monthly visits to the coast, tossing out every starfish he found from the experimental location while leaving the control site untouched.

After a year, he documented dramatic changes which occurred in the altered site where starfish had been discarded.

Mussels, the main prey item for the starfish, had ‘flourished spectacularly’ in the absence of starfish, destroying the impressive diversity of organisms previously found and creating a near-monoculture of mussels. Read More…