Mystery Nudibranch!

dwashbur · Post by **dwashbur** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 11:18 am

With Behrens' book plus Lamb/Hanby, we can usually come up with an ID for the nudis we see, but this guy has us stumped. Using the basic criteria, he should be some kind of dirona, but we can't figure it out. He has a frontal veil, as in this shot:

His rhinophores are tufted, as seen at the top of this shot:

And clearly his cerata are leaf-shaped and somewhat bloated, at least most of them are:

So it should be fairly straightforward, but it doesn't match anything we've been able to find. Thoughts?

Jan K · Post by **Jan K** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:53 pm

Dave, whatever it is - great find ! I have no idea either

dwashbur · Post by **dwashbur** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:21 pm

Jan K wrote:Dave, whatever it is - great find ! I have no idea either

Holy guacamole... (with apologies to Miss Piggy) If you don't know, then I don't feel so bad!

Jan K · Post by **Jan K** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:37 pm

Holy guacamole... (with apologies to Miss Piggy) If you don't know, then I don't feel so bad![/quote]

Dave, I don't claim to be an expert... But I am impressed how much you improved from the first posts. Where did you find this beauty?

John Rawlings · Post by **John Rawlings** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 3:37 pm

I don't claim to be an expert, either, but I think that I may have found this little bugger in Dave's Eastern Pacific Nudibranchs on page 45.

To me, it looks like it is a specimen of "Ortea's Cyerce", Cyerce orteai, a nuibranch that was not described until 2000. The photo in the book and those you posted look extremely similar to me.

The only trouble seems to be the range - Baja California to Costa Rica, Hawaii and Okinawa....if the identification is correct, you may have just established a new northern range for this species.

Did you take this photo down in Monterey?

I'll e-mail Dave to see what he thinks....

- John

dwashbur · Post by **dwashbur** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:46 pm

The cerata match, all right, but I don't see a frontal veil in his picture, and if those are the rhinophores in the lower right corner of the picture, they don't match. Then again, I don't have any better ideas at this point.

Yes, this was in Monterey. It was on the big pipe that leads out to the metridium field, around 25 fsw.

Be sure to let us know what Dave says!

Dusty2 · Post by **Dusty2** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:24 pm

Great find Dave, and I gree with Jan. The improvement from those first pics is amazing.

We need to get more posts from outside our little biosphere. It's stimlates the urge to explore new places

John Rawlings · Post by **John Rawlings** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 4:51 am

Looks like I was "a dog barking up the wrong tree"! I received this response back from Dave:

Nice photos. This is Dirona picta, # 223 in my book. Note the rhinophores. This is the whitish version.

Cyerce is a sacoglossid with rolled rhinophores.

Send these any time. Love to see them.

Dave

David Behrens
5091 Debbie Court
Gig Harbor, WA 98335
253-851-5622
http://www.seachallengers.com

dwashbur · Post by **dwashbur** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 10:04 am

Cool! That's yet another new one for us, as if we didn't know that, heh heh. That makes at least 8 new nudis from our Monterey trip. But I think I'm gonna have to post this guy at the Sea Slug Site as well, just as an interesting sighting.