Macroalgae constitute an important habitat for a wide variety of marine invertebrates in coastal ecosystems, which can obtain food, refuge against predators, protection against environmental stress and sites for reproduction, and/or larval settlement (Christie et al., 2009; Thomaz & Cunha, 2010). Those small-sized associated animals have great ecological importance, as they also serve as food items for other larger coastal species such as fishes, thus acting as energy links among different levels in marine trophic webs (Donadi et al., 2017;Dulvy et al., 2002).The southeastern coast of Brazil has a great diversity of macroalgae, with about 50 species of different groups and growth forms