Sea Star Wasting Disease
There is some alarm over an outbreak of Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD) characterized by lesions, limb curling and deflation, and death as the animals rapidly degrade or 'melt'. The outbreak began in June 2013 and has killed sea stars from Baja California, Mexico, to Southern Alaska. It might be the biggest marine wildlife epizootic ever observed.
Evidence that SSWD is caused by a virus came from experiments in which extracts of diseased sea stars were passed through a filter with pore sizes small enough to allow passage of viruses but not bacteria or other microbes. When injected into healthy sea stars, these filtrates induced sea star wasting disease. Analysis of the DNA sequence data revealed the presence of a densovirus (a parvovirus) related to viruses found in Hawaiian sea urchins. The authors called this virus sea star-associated densovirus, SSaDV.
Like other members of the parvovirus family, these are small (25 nm diameter), naked icosahedral viruses with a ~6 kb single stranded DNA genome. When sea stars were infected in the laboratory with filtrates from diseased animals, virus loads, determined by PCR, increased with time together with disease progression.
http://www.virology.ws/2014/11/17/a-virus-that-melts-sea-stars/