"Coral reefs, the delicate marine environments threatened by global warming, are also suffering huge damage from rats, a new scientific study says.

Rats, which arrived on many tropical islands by ship more than 200 years ago, do not directly harm the coral themselves, but they have set off a damaging chain of consequences for life on land and in the sea.

The rodents have ravaged the seabird populations on 90 percent of the world’s island archipelagoes, said Nick Graham, a marine ecologist at Lancaster University in England, who led a study comparing rat-infested islands with ones that are rat-free."

Jim Drury reports for the Washington Post October 29, 2018. [2]