| Remarks |
On soft and hard bottoms such as reef platform, intertidally and subtidally to a depth of about 20 m. This opportunistic species is characterized by its fast growth rate and high productive capacity, together with the unique feature to colonize both hard and soft substrates. On hard bottoms, individuals are often nestling among tufts of algae or other colonial mytilids. On soft bottom areas, they can live byssally attached to various objects such as wharf pilings, boat hulls or eelgrass, or weave their byssal threads into an all-enclosing nest, forming large, dense mats with a maximum recorded density of 2 600 specimens per m2. Colonies tending to fluctuate widely and unpredictably in time, even completely disappearing within a few months. They rapidly change sandy bottoms into mud flats through a copious retention of silt and mucous-bound faeces and pseudofaeces, then eliminating other infaunal species of bivalves (Ref. 348). |