Ascidia archaia

Tunicates

Ascidia archaia was listed as an introduced species by Nydam et al. (2022), with one occurrence in Miami in 2004, so its establishment is unknown.  Ths tunicate was described from Indonesia by Sluiter in 1890.  It has a broad distribution in the Indo-Pacific.  It was collected, as A. corelloides in Curacao before 1924, and also found in Puerto Rico, Belize, and Bocas del Toro, on the Caribbean Coast of Panama. Most Western Atlantic records,  and two recent Pacific Panama records  refer to very small numbers of specimens (Van Name 1945, Bullard et al. 2011; Bonnet et al. 2013). Ascidia archaia is also introduced and established in Hawaii, first seen in public aquaria in 1940.  In continental US waters, one specimen was collected in 2004 on a fouling plate in a marina in Biscayne Bay (Nydam et al. 2022), but we do not know of further records.  Ship fouling is the likeliest vector of introduction.