an expert on echinoderms (a group of ocean animals that includes starfish, sea urchins and brittle stars) at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He helped us to fill in some of the ...

As important as the ecological effects of the disease are, the starfish meltdown affects people, too. The first ocean creature many kids see or touch, starfish are an ambassador to an unseen world ...

By the time it is done with an area, starfish that had once littered the ocean floor have been reduced to mounds of white goo. The silent killer now appears to be a kind of parvovirus—the group ...