For a tiny creature with such a cute and seemingly harmless name, the sea squirt has done a lot of damage in a relatively short time.
Now thanks to modern genetic analysis techniques, a trio of researchers from the university’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research have identified three previously unidentified sub-types of sea squirts, commonly known as the golden star ascidian, and discovered new clues about their capacity – and possibly the capacity of other organisms – for invading various ecosystems.