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An Invasive Marine Alien Emerging: Causing A Biologist's "Worst Nightmare'

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In all his decades at sea, the man said, he’d never encountered anything like it. It’s the highly acidic mats of the invasive sea squirt Didemnum. Like the peachy-beige amorphous sheets, sea squirt spread like pancake batter over rocks and any living thing in their path. Its look like as if it has come from the outer space. True, its alien to us, but not so for the Earth.

The scientists refer the globs — parts of a mat of sea squirts, soft-bodied animals, –as tunicates, for the tunic-resembling sheath covering each individual. Consisting of thousands of 2-millimeter-tall individuals fused side to side, this was a colonial tunicate.

This devilish species’ behavior is considered to be a biologist’s “worst nightmare”. This sea squirt is said to reproduce rapidly by several means, and is feared to be able to cause havoc as it has no known predator, and grows over and smothers any plant or animal that doesn’t make way.

Via: Science News

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