Consider the sea urchin. Specifically, the painted urchin: Lytechinus pictus, a prickly Ping-Pong ball from the eastern Pacific Ocean. The species is a smaller and shorter-spined cousin of the purple ...

South of Tampa Bay, in Florida, wedged between a quiet neighborhood and a mangrove forest, custom-designed aquariums are home to thousands of sea-urchin larvae that tumble and drift through the water.

The loss of one iconic species, sunflower sea stars, unleashed a voracious eater of seagrass habitats and upended the coastal ...

Sharks easily consumed large, spiky sea urchins – sometimes in just a few gulps. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Long-spined sea ...

With spikes as long as knitting needles, long-spined sea urchins may look like underwater villains, but their appetite for algae makes them the unsung heroes of Caribbean reefs. Courtesy of the ...

During a night dive in Bali, an underwater photographer happened upon a fascinating example of symbiosis between a carrier ...

Keystone species play an outsized role in the ecosystem, affecting the natural balance in ways that cannot easily be replaced.