Jeounghee Lee

1 Introduction Marine ecosystems face increasing pressure from climate change, habitat degradation, and the spread of non–indigenous species (NIS), resulting in biodiversity loss, altered ecosystem functioning, and economic damage (Ojaveer et al. 2015; Seebens et al. 2018; López-Gappa 2022). Among benthic invertebrates, ascidians are often dominant components of fouling communities and play important roles in ecological succession (Lindeyer and Gittenberger 2011; Lambert 2001; Soares et al.

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All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.