With their round, furry faces and tendency to hold hands while they sleep, sea otters seem almost perfectly built to appeal to our sense of the adorable. But they also play a vital role in protecting their ecosystem from the effects of climate change.

Sea otters are what scientists refer to as a keystone species—their presence keeps an entire ecosystem in balance. In a recent paper, Justin Ries, a professor of marine and environmental sciences at Northeastern, and his colleagues demonstrated how keystone predators like sea otters can help mitigate the effects of climate change and give an ecosystem a fighting chance.

“It’s really an example of the importance of ecosystem stability when climate change is occurring,” Ries says. “If the ecosystem is healthy, the system can withstand more climate change stress than when the system is out of balance for ecological reasons, like the top predators removed.”

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