Predation on newly settled individuals has been shown to shape marine sessile invertebrate communities of the northeast coast of North America. This study tests if this response can also be observed at other geographic locations that support different assemblage of marine sessile invertebrates. The effects of predation in early post-settlement assemblages were tested at two locations in Victoria; Workshops Jetty, Williamstown and Queenscliff Pier, Queenscliff during the summer of 2005-2006. At each site, early post-settlement assemblages of sessile invertebrates were established and subsequently exposed to a series of predation exclusion treatments of varying durations. This dataset gives the abundances of sessile invertebrates at Queenscliff Pier after an initial 4 day settlement period, and 20 and 40 days after these initial assemblages were exposed to three predation exclusion treatments: i) uncaged, no predator exclusion; ii) full 2 mm mesh cage, total predator exclusion; iii) full 10 mm mesh cage, exclusion of large predators only. In addition two cage control treatments were established to identify if the cages themselves caused a change in the sessile invertebrate assemblages. Cage controls were partial cages constructed from both 2 mm and 10 mm mesh. The results indicated that didemnid ascidians may have been preyed upon by a small predator, but this predator was not identified. However, predation did not exert a strong influence on other taxa or on the overall structure of sessile invertebrate communities at Queenscliff.
