---
title: Eilat Star Ascidian (Botryllus eilatensis)
scientific_name: Botryllus eilatensis
common_name: Eilat Star Ascidian
taxon: Sea squirts
published: 2026-08-08T18:49:37.759Z
updated: 2026-08-08T19:32:31.870Z
tags: Eilat Star Ascidian, Botryllus eilatensis, Sea squirts, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/tunicates/sea-squirts/eilat-star-ascidian
---

# Eilat Star Ascidian (*Botryllus eilatensis*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Sea squirts (*Ascidiacea*)
- **Size:** colonies to 15 cm across
- **Depth:** 1-25 m
- **Diet:** Filter feeder
- **Activity:** Cathemeral
- **Rarity:** Uncommon
- **Habitat:** Encrusting shaded rock, dead coral and wrecks
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Budding, Simultaneous hermaphrodite

## How to recognise it

- flat encrusting sheet with animals arranged in star-shaped clusters
- each star shares one central opening
- colour varies - orange, purple, grey with paler stars
- colonies up to 15 cm across

A colonial sea squirt that encrusts shaded rock as a flat sheet, its individual animals arranged in star-shaped clusters of six to a dozen, each cluster sharing one central outlet while every animal keeps its own inlet. The pattern is unmistakable once seen, and colonies reach about 15 cm (6 in).

The colony grows by budding, so every animal in it is a clone, and it can regenerate an entire colony from a fragment. That makes the genus a laboratory favourite for work on regeneration and on immune recognition: when two colonies meet, they either fuse into one or reject each other along a visible line, using a system that resembles vertebrate tissue matching. This species was described from the northern end of this sea, and the star pattern makes it one of the few colonial ascidians a diver can name underwater.

## Also known as

- **Russian:** Ботриллус эйлатский

## Range

Red Sea

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*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/tunicates/sea-squirts/eilat-star-ascidian)*
*Updated: August 8, 2026*