The warming climate in Antarctica is having a number of adverse effects, and one recently detailed in a new study is an influx of a certain crustacean.
According to The Washington Post, a spike in Antarctica's king crab population is posing a threat to marine animals such as sea stars and worms. The researchers published their work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Because other creatures on the continental shelf have evolved without shell-crushing predators, if the crabs moved in they could radically restructure the ecosystem," study lead author Richard Aronson, professor and head of biological sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology, said in a press release.
What remains to be seen with the king crab invasion is whether or not they will expand their presence beyond where it is now.
"The only way to test the hypothesis that the crabs are expanding their depth-range is to track their movements through long-term monitoring," study co-author James McClintock, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in the release.
The researchers will be able to apply their study to projections for how Antarctica's ecosystem will fare over the next several years.
"This is about the diversity of marine communities on the planet," Aronson told The Post. "This is about what you want this planet to look like - what this planet ought to look like - and how we are doing as stewards of the planet."
