Invasive habitat-forming species cause large changes to the abiotic environment, whichmay lead to lethal and sublethal effects on native fauna. In this study, we tested whether morphological anti-predator traits of an infaunal bivalve, Anadara trapezia, differed between areas invaded by the habitat-forming seaweed Caulerpa taxifolia and uninvaded habitats in estuaries in New South Wales, Austra...

BACKGROUND MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous non-coding small RNAs (sRNAs) that can base pair with their target mRNAs, which represses their translation or induces their degradation in various biological processes. To identify miRNAs regulated by heavy metal stress, we constructed two sRNA libraries for the blood clam Tegillarca granosa: one for organisms exposed to toxic levels of cadmium (Cd)...

Behavioural interactions between ecosystem engineers may strongly influence community structure. We tested whether an invasive ecosystem engineer, the alga Caulerpa taxifolia, indirectly facilitated community diversity by modifying the behaviour of a native ecosystem engineer, the clam Anadara trapezia, in southeastern Australia. In this study, clams in Caulerpa-invaded sediments partially unbu...

Invasive habitat-forming ecosystem engineers modify the abiotic environment and thus represent a major perturbation to many ecosystems. Because native species often persist in these invaded habitats but have no shared history with the ecosystem engineer, the engineer may impose novel selective pressure on native species. In this study, we used a phenotypic selection framework to determine wheth...