Coral. Photograph: © SAF – Coastal Care
Excerpts;
A little-known marine snail may be destroying coral reefs at an alarming rate, scientists report this week in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. The creature, described as a “zoological oddity” by the authors of the study, is known as Dendropoma maximum and belongs to a bizarre family of snails which fix themselves to a hard surface (such as coral) and catch their food using a ‘mucus net’. Although previous work has pointed towards the organism’s harmful effect on certain coral species, this is the first time that the snail’s effects on multiple species of corals have been described, raising concerns that the creature may be a significant factor in worldwide coral decline…
