About the Class
| Taught by Jason Hodin |
In 2019, the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL) pioneered the first ever restoration breeding program for the endangered sunflower star, Pycnopodia helianthoides. Populations of this once common top predator plummeted in the Salish Sea and across its range starting in 2013 in response to an unprecedented outbreak of sea star wasting disease (SSWD). The results were especially severe in California, where the sunflower star decline coincided with a marine heatwave that stressed foundational bull kelp and advantaged sea urchins that eat kelp. In the absence of the predatory stars, urchin populations exploded, and healthy kelp forests turned into urchin barrens.
In this class, Dr. Jason Hodin, Senior Research Scientist at FHL, will give an overview of his sea star lab’s efforts over the past 6 years from working out the secrets to full- life cycle culture of this enormous predator, to re-wilding the lab reared stars into a developing urchin barren on San Juan Island. Hodin will highlight his lab’s participation in the groundbreaking discovery of a bacterium that causes SSWD in sunflower stars, and how this finding can open up breeding approaches for disease resilience.
| About Jason Hodin |
Dr. Jason Hodin received his Ph.D. in Zoology in 1999 at the University of Washington, focusing on insect metamorphosis. He is currently a biologist who specializes in raising species of sea urchin, sea stars and other related creatures, and studies their larvae and metamorphosis at Friday Harbor Laboratories. His investigations on careful rearing of echinoderm larvae through metamorphosis and into the juvenile stage are what led him to be tapped to lead the sunflower star captive rearing effort.
