Fouling community

These communities are characterized by the presence of a variety of sessile organisms including ascidians, bryozoans, mussels, tube building polychaetes, sea anemones, sponges, barnacles, and more.

Common predators on and around fouling communities include small crabs, starfish, fish, limpets, chitons, other gastropods, and a variety of worms.

Fouling communities can have a negative economic impact on humans, by damaging the bottom of boats, docks, and other marine human-made structures.

[3] These largely non-indigenous species communities living on docks and boats usually have a higher resistance to anthropogenic disturbances.

[6] Fouling communities were highlighted particularly in the literature of marine ecology as a potential example of alternate stable states through the work of John Sutherland in the 1970s at Duke University,[7] although this was later called into question by Connell and Sousa.