Drone deals DEATH – to deadly starfish An Australian university is about to start deploying drones on a seek-and-destroy mission. The target? The Crown of Thorns Starfish, which is famously a serious danger to the country's Great Barrier Reef. The invading predator first emerged as a problem for the reef in the 1960s, and since then it's been blamed for coral cover …
The bot represents a very specific predator for the starfish, so deploying it at a large scale will rapidly produce an evolutionary pressure for the starfish to change their appearance: the ones that don't look too much like the bot's internal concept of a target will survive and breed. I really hope that somebody is going to make an ecological evolutionary study out of this, as well as dealing death to the coral-munchers.
Of course, reducing the nutrient runoff from Queensland agriculture could help, too.
"Of course, reducing the nutrient runoff from Queensland agriculture could help, too."
No, that is not what causes the COTS to proliferate. They have only one natural enemy: the Triton: a large shell that is nearly extinct due to human collection: they have beautiful shells.
(But reducing the run-off would still be beneficial to the marine environment, that much is true)
Use the robot to collect one of the starfish's natural enemies, one of which could be very effective, if the proper genus were known. A large polyp of the Pseudocorynactis is known to eat this starfish whole scale, but is apparently poorly understood as to which one of this genus is the true natural enemy. With capture by the robots, their DNA could be discovered and more of this specie spawned to combat the starfish as well. This could put a one two punch on the problem. The robot to zap a singular starfish, and capture any polys feeding on one in the area, then release juvenile forms of the polyp to eventually attack any Acanthaster planci that were missed during the initial robot hunt.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
