Crown-of-Thorns Starfish Transcriptomes

The Crown-of-thorns starfish (COTS), Acanthaster planci, is a highly fecund predator of reef-building corals throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Population outbreaks of this starfish cause substantial loss of coral cover, diminishing the integrity and resilience of reef ecosystems. The genome from a Great Barrier Reef COTS provides insights into conspecific communication that may guide the generation of biocontrol mimetics for use on reefs with COTS outbreaks.

More than 150 transcriptomes from Great Barrier Reef COTS that allow for the analysis of gene activity between sexes of wild COTS across breeding and non-breeding seasons, between multiple discrete tissues and organs, and when starfish are translocated from the wild into captivity.

These transcriptomes are aligned to the genome and available for viewing and analysis through the Apollo Portal.