Researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) have just discovered that the Hawaiian tiger cowrie (Leho-kiko in Hawaiian) is a voracious predator of alien sponges such as the Orange Keyhole sponge, which can overgrow native corals and has become a concern as it spread across reefs within Kāneʻohe Bay.
Researchers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) have just discovered that the Hawaiian tiger cowrie (Leho-kiko in Hawaiian) is a voracious predator of alien sponges such as the Orange Keyhole sponge, which can overgrow native corals and has become a concern as it spread across reefs within Kāneʻohe Bay. In the study published recently, researchers found that each cowrie eats more than half their body weight in sponges each week.
“We found that cowries ate most species of alien sponges that we offered them, and that a single snail can consume an entire sponge the size of your fist in roughly a week,” said Jan Vicente, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at HIMB in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).
Alien invasive species, such as killer algae in the Mediterranean or lionfish in the Caribbean, can devastate native ecosystems. Hawaiʻi ranks among the highest in the world for both the number of marine alien invasive species and the success of those invaders in taking over space from native species. Prevention, early detection, and rapid removal are the best tools to prevent impacts from alien species, because once invaders become established, efforts to eradicate them are expensive and often unsuccessful.
Read more at University Of Hawaii At Manoa
Photo: Hawaiian tiger cowries feeding on the Orange keyhole sponge (Mycale grandis). Photo credit: Leon Weaver
