Alien species of <i>Bugula</i> (Bryozoa) along the Atlantic coasts of Europe

Three apparently non-native species of Bugula occur in marinas and harbours in Atlantic Europe. The most common, B. neritina, was known from a few sites in southern Britain and northern France during the 20th century, following its discovery at Plymouth by 1911. During the 1950-60s it was abundant in a dock heated by power station effluent at Swansea, south Wales, where it flourished until the late 1960s, while water temperatures were 7-10°C above ambient. It disappeared after power generation ceased, when summer temperatures probably became insufficient to support breeding. Details of disappearances have not been recorded but B. neritina was not seen in Britain between c1970 and 1999. Since 2000, it has been recorded along the south coast of England, and subsequently in marinas in the southern North Sea, Ireland and southern Scotland, well to the north of its former range, as well as along the Atlantic coast from Spain to The Netherlands. It has also been introduced to outlying localities such as the Azores and Tristan da Cunha. We report that this rapidly spreading form has the same COI haplotype as B. neritina currently invasive elsewhere in the world. B. simplex has been reported less, with 1950s records from settlement panels in some Welsh docks. It has not been targeted in most recent marina surveys but has been observed in southwest England, Belgium and The Netherlands. There are almost no recent records of B. stolonifera, though it was probably introduced to a few British and Irish ports prior to the 1950s. Its current status in most of western Europe is unknown but it has been reported as expanding throughout most of the world during the last 60 years. Having poorly known distributions, B. simplex and B. stolonifera should be recorded during future monitoring of alien species in Atlantic Europe. Illustrations to aid identification are included for all three species

Recent discoveries of alien <i>Watersipora</i> (Bryozoa) in Western Europe, with redescriptions of species

We report the introduction of the encrusting bryozoanWatersipora subtorquata to Atlantic coasts of Europe. This species is highly invasive, having become common on coastlines throughout cool-temperate areas of the world since the 1980s. Confusion exists over the identity of this and other Watersipora species, which lack characters that are conventionally used in bryozoan systematics. W. subtorquata has not been well distinguished from W. cucullata which, reports dating back to the mid 1800s suggest, is native to the Mediterranean Basin or represents an early shipping introduction. W. Cucullata has been placed in synonymy with W. subovoidea, a taxon lacking a holotype. We designate a neotype forW. Subovoidea, recognizing its conspecificity with W. cucullata, and demonstrate a simple morphometric means of separating this species from W. subtorquata using zooid feature ratios (operculum area versus total frontal shield). An orange watersiporid population that was first recognized in Guernsey, in the European-Atlantic, in 2007, is shown by morphometric and mitochondrial genetic analysis to match W. subtorquata. It contains the commonest, widely introduced COI haplotype that, along with other evidence, suggests recent transfer via shipping traffic to Europe. A second population (previously referred alternatively to W. aterrim or W. subovoidea) has been reported from Brittany and Bordeaux (Atlantic coastline, France). This population is also aligned with W. subtorquata based on morphometrics and COI haplotype. In contrast to the Guernsey introduction, the earlier French-Atlantic introduction appears related to oyster imports from Japan

An appraisal of the effects of the Sea Empress oil spillage on sensitive sessile marine invertebrate communities

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