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Abstract from Medline: return to Search Results Science, August 25, 1989; 245(4920): 847-850. Evidence from Sediments of Long-Term Acanthaster planci Predation on Corals of the Great Barrier Reef. Peter D Walbran, Robert A Henderson, A J Timothy Jull, and M John Head
Since 1962 the crown-of-thorns starfish, Acanthaster planci, has caused the devastation of living coral in large tracts of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Some authorities view this as a modern phenomenon, resulting from ecological disturbance caused by man. Evidence from skeletal remains in sediment suggests that large A. planci populations have been part of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem for at least 8000 years. Coral predation by A. planci is likely to have influenced the morphological fabric of the Great Barrier Reef in its post-glacial development and may also have influenced species richness of the reef biota. PMID: 17773362 MEDLINE data is licensed from the National Library of Medicine. Some material in the NLM databases is from copyrighted publications of the respective copyright claimants. Users of the NLM databases are solely responsible for compliance with any copyright restrictions and are referred to the publication data appearing in the bibliographic citations, as well as to the copyright notices appearing in the original publications, all of which are hereby incorporated by reference. |
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