Chthamalus proteus, a high intertidal barnacle from the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, is one of the most conspicuous recent introductions to Hawaiian waters. It arrived some-time between the early 1970s, when the last thorough survey of intertidal barnacles on O'ahu was done (Matsuda 1973), and the late 1990s, when it was photographed by an amateur biologist who was putting together a book on Hawai'i's sea creatures (Southward et al. 1998). On O'ahu, the barnacle attains high densities in protected bays and lagoons, particularly where there are few other intertidal organisms. Chthamalus proteus is somewhat less abundant in semiprotected wates where it co-occurs with a suite of native organisms. We examined interactions between C. proteus and two native Hawaiian species, the barnacle Nesochthamalus intertextus and the pulmonate limpet Siphonaria normalis.
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