Native Hawaiian tiger cowries eat alien invasive species
Tuesday, August 18, 2020 - 11:21
in Biology & Nature
Researchers at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa's Hawai'i 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 Kāne'ohe Bay. In the study published recently, researchers found that each cowrie eats more than half their body weight in sponges each week.