Marine herbivores chomp eelgrass, making it susceptible to wasting
by Laura Reiley, Cornell University
February 5, 2025
Eelgrass, a type of flowering seagrass found in temperate zones around the world, provides habitat for many species, protects coastlines, improves water quality, sequesters carbon and supports fishing economies. The foundation of a highly productive marine food web, eelgrass’s health is paramount but mysterious.
Scientists have long studied how terrestrial invertebrate herbivores such as insects (aphids, beetles) and gastropods (snails, slugs) frequently act as vectors, transmitting plant diseases through their feeding activities and often creating wounds on plants’ surfaces that make it easier for pathogens to enter. But how this works, and how pernicious the problem is, has been harder to study underwater in the ocean.
In two new papers, Cornell plant-herbivore experts and researchers from the Cornell Institute for Computational Sustainability joined forces to show the significant impacts of herbivores like sea snails on the spread of seagrass wasting disease. Grazing by small herbivores was associated with a 29% increase in the prevalence of disease, which contributes to huge losses in meadow areas from San Diego to Alaska.
“Invertebrate Herbivores Influence Seagrass Wasting Disease Dynamics” and “Seagrass Wasting Disease Prevalence and Lesion Area Increase with Invertebrate Grazing Across the Northeastern Pacific,” the former in the December 2024 issue of Ecology, the latter in the January 2025 issue, bring together the work of Drew Harvell, professor emerita of marine ecology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Olivia Graham, a marine disease ecologist and postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Lillian Aoki, an eelgrass ecologist and former postdoctoral researchers in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Carla Gomes, the Ronald C. and Antonia V. Nielsen Professor of Computing and Information Science, director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability, and a Schmidt AI2050 Senior fellow; and Brendan Rappazzo, doctoral student in computer science.
Keep reading: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/02/marine-herbivores-chomp-eelgrass-making-it-susceptible-wasting
Read the Ecology papers:
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.4493
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.4532