Diego R. Barneche

Abstract While biological control (or biocontrol) is an established method for managing pest species in terrestrial systems, few successful applications have been reported for marine environments. Crown-of-thorns starfish (CoTS, Acanthaster ssp.) are regarded as a pest species across the Indo-Pacific, where they are voracious predators of corals and represent one of the largest causes of coral mortality on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).

The primary driving force of all animals is the necessity of finding the right kind of food and enough of it. Food is the burning question in animal society, and the whole structure and activities of the community are dependent on questions of food-supply. Elton ( 1935; Animal Ecology, Chapter V, p. 56) 1 INTRODUCTION Food consumption is the fundamental process that fuels an animal's energy budget because it provides the energy and nutrients necessary for their survival, growth and reproduction.

1 Introduction Blue carbon refers to the natural binding and storing of carbon by coastal and oceanic ecosystems (Nellemann et al. 2009). Building upon decades of research (Smith 1981; Lovelock and Duarte 2019; Macreadie et al. 2019; Howard et al. 2023), there has been a global push to protect and restore blue carbon ecosystems to enable this natural pathway of carbon sequestration to reduce the severity of greenhouse gas-induced climate change (IPCC 2014; Macreadie et al. 2021; IPBC 2023).