Widespread demographic explosion of a non-indigenous hydrozoan on an oceanic island

Abstract

The arrival of non-indigenous species into new areas is one of the main processes altering the oceans globally. Macrorhynchia philippina is a large-sized colonial hydrozoan of an invasive nature. To obtain a deeper understanding of the process of colonization of new areas, it is essential to describe the ecological pattern through scales of temporal and spatial variation. In this study, we describe the colonization by M. philippina of an oceanic island (Gran Canaria Island, Canary Islands, eastern Atlantic). We describe the abundance and size structure patterns of M. philippina in three nearshore habitats, rocky reefs, seagrass meadows and rhodolith seabeds, at times before (2014), during (2016) and after (2017) the demographic explosion of this species. On rocky reefs and rhodolith seabeds, the abundance of colonies increased dramatically in 2017 relative to 2014, e.g. from 0 to 138 colonies/100 m2. On seagrass meadows, however, the colonies were smaller. In summary, M. philippina shows an ecological plasticity to rapidly colonize different types of nearshore habitats, but with varying success.