Researchers Create New AI Technique to Analyze Eelgrass Wasting Disease

An interdisciplinary study group used ecological field methods combined with cutting-edge artificial intelligence to discover eelgrass-wasting disease at almost three dozen sites throughout a 1,700-mile length of the West Coast, from San Diego to southern Alaska. The important finding: Seagrass wasting, which is induced by the organism Labyrinthula zosterae and may be detected by lesions on grass blades that can be validated by molecular diagnostics, is linked to warmer-than-normal water temperatures, especially in early summer, regardless of location. Eelgrass is an important seagrass species for fish habitat, biodiversity, coastline protection, and carbon sequestration along the coast. Carla Gomes, the Ronald C. and Antonia V. Nielsen Professor of Computing and Information Science at the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, as well as Drew Harvell, professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; College of Arts and Sciences), led the Cornell research team, which published their findings in Limnology and Oceanography on May 27th, 2022. '18, a computer science doctoral student, and Lillian Aoki '12, a former postdoctoral researcher in Harvell's lab who is currently a research scientist at the University of Oregon, are co-lead authors.