Agradecimentos: The authors thank the six marinas that support our research: Yacht Club Ilhabela, Marina Igararecê, Iate Clube Ubatuba, Marina Porto Imperial, Iate Clube Santos and Clube Naval Charitas. We thank the CEBIMar-USP for logistic support. This project was funded by Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) (process 2016/17647-5 Brazil). FTO also thank the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for the award of a PhD Scholarship. This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) - Finance Code 001 Brazil, ACM was supported by CNPq process 309995/2017-5 Brazil. LMV was supported by CNPq process 308768/2018-3 Brazil. SNS was supported by FAPESP process 2015/24408-4 and
2016/50389-0 Brazil. We thank AC Amaral for support in polychaete identification. Ver menos

Abstract: Human occupation of coastal areas promotes the establishment of non-native species but information on bioinvasions is usually biased toward the Northern Hemisphere. We assessed non-native species' importance in sessile communities at six marinas along the most urbanized area of the Southwestern Atlantic coastline. We found 67 species, of which 19 are exotic. The most frequent species was the exotic polychaete Branchiommo luctuosum, while the most abundant was the exotic bryozoan Schizoporella errata that monopolized the substrata in three marinas. Along with S. errata, the exotic polychaete Hydroides elegans and ascidian Styela plicate dominated space in the three remaining marinas, while native species were in general rare. We show that communities associated with artificial substrata along this Brazilian urbanized area are dominated by exotic species and that using abundance data along with species identity can improve our understanding of the importance of exotic species for the dynamics of biological communities Ver menos