New hope for the sunflower star in our ocean’s menagerie

Hundred-year-old giant clams, coral kingdoms that rival human cities, jellyfish that glow in the dark, and sea stars with super strength: ocean invertebrates are among the oldest and most diverse organisms on earth, In The Ocean’s Menagerie: How Earth’s Strangest Creatures Reshape the Rules of Life, leading marine ecologist Dr. Drew Harvell explores how these spineless creatures have turned 600 million years of adaptation into a stockpile of evolutionary “superpowers” to thrive in aquatic landscapes around the world.

Bending the “rules” of land-based biology, marine invertebrates have developed highly specialized skills to help them with everything from energy consumption and nutrition to defense against predation and disease. The Ocean’s Menagerie introduces readers to numerous players in these deep-sea evolutionary skill games: corals stronger than steel or concrete; sponges that create their own disease-protecting chemicals; and keystone species of sea stars that tend to the balance of their coastline habitats like experienced gardeners. Harvell’s team recently uncovered the cause of sea star wasting in a discovery of the decade, and she reflects on the science to get to that revelation and what it means for the future of our local stars.