1st record: Melbourne/Victoria/Port Phillip Bay (1972, Holmes 1976, cited by Keough and Ross 1999; Cohen et al. 2000)

Melbourne/Victoria/Port Phillip Bay (1972, Holmes 1976, Keough and Ross 1999; Cohen et al. 2000)

Level	Vector
Probable	Hull Fouling

Ecological Impact		Habitat Change
In experimental studies with various densities of Styela clava, fauna from Port Phillip Bay showed idiosyncratic responses to increased Styela density, with crustaceans, and tanaids, as a group decreasing, while the deposit-feeding bivalve Laternula rostrata increased. These changes appeared to be due to subtle changes in hydrodynamics, sediment quality, emigration or altered survival in Styela rather than community-wide effects (Ross et al. 2007).

Ecological Impact		Competition
Styela clava grows in very dense populations in Port Phillip Bay, apparently displacing other fouling organisms. Because of its high filtering rate, it was expected to compete for food with other suspension-feeding taxa (Currie et al. 1999). This was not seen in experiments conducted by Ross et al. (2007).

Species Regional Summary Styela clava None ( AUS-VIII )