Sentences with phrase «spined urchin»

«Damselfish populations appear to have grown recently as their predators have been overfished, which is one plausible explanation as to why long - spined urchin populations have failed to recover.»

To understand why the long - spined urchins have not returned to the reef more than 30 years later, Scripps scientists Katie Cramer and Dick Norris analyzed the amount of fossilized urchin spines that accumulated in reef sediment layers over the past 3,000 years to paint a picture of life on the reef before it was altered from the disease outbreak and human activities such as fishing and pollution.

Not exact matches

The researchers sorted the fossils out of the reef sediment to track the amount of long - spined and other urchin species over time.

A new study suggests that an aggressive reef competitor — the Threespot Damselfish — may have impeded the recovery of Caribbean long - spined sea urchin populations after a mysterious disease outbreak caused a massive die - off of these animals over three decades ago.