Marine invertebrate mass mortality events (MMEs) threaten biodiversity and have the potential to catastrophically alter ecosystem structure. A proximal question around acute MMEs is their etiologies and/or environmental drivers. Establishing a robust cause of mortality is challenging in marine habitats due to the complexity of the interactions among species and the free dispersal of microorganisms from surrounding waters to metazoan microbiomes. The 2013–2014 sea star wasting disease (SSWD) MME in the northeast Pacific Ocean highlights the difficulty in establishing responsible agents. In less than a year of scientific investigation, investigators identified a candidate agent and provided at the time convincing data of pathogenic and transmissible disease. However, later investigation failed to support the initial results, and critical retrospective analyses of experimental procedures and reinterpretation of early findings disbanded any candidate agent. Despite the circuitous path that the investigation and understanding of SSWD have taken, lessons learned from the initial investigation—improving on approaches that led to misinterpretation—have been successfully applied to the 2022 Diadema antillarum investigation. In this review, we outline the history of the initial SSWD investigation, examine how early exploration led to spurious interpretations, summarize the lessons learned, provide recommendations for future work in other systems, and examine potential links between the SSWD event and the Diadema antillarum MME.

中文翻译：

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从海星消耗性疾病调查中吸取的教训


海洋无脊椎动物大规模死亡事件（MME）威胁生物多样性，并有可能灾难性地改变生态系统结构。围绕急性 MME 的一个最接近的问题是其病因和/或环境驱动因素。由于物种之间相互作用的复杂性以及微生物从周围水域到后生动物微生物组的自由扩散，在海洋生境中确定强有力的死亡原因具有挑战性。 2013-2014年东北太平洋海星消耗性疾病（SSWD）MME凸显了建立负责任的代理人的困难。在不到一年的科学研究中，研究人员确定了一种候选病原体，并提供了当时令人信服的致病和传染性疾病数据。然而，后来的调查未能支持最初的结果，对实验程序的严格回顾性分析和对早期发现的重新解释解散了任何候选药物。尽管 SSWD 的调查和理解走了一条曲折的道路，但从初步调查中吸取的经验教训（改进导致误解的方法）已成功应用于 2022 年 Diadema antillarum 调查。在这篇综述中，我们概述了最初 SSWD 调查的历史，研究早期探索如何导致虚假解释，总结经验教训，为其他系统的未来工作提供建议，并研究 SSWD 事件和 Diadema antillarum MME 之间的潜在联系。