Doto from the Barents Sea
December 17, 1999
From: Irina Roginskaya.
Dear Bill,
May I introduce two pictures of a Doto I collected in the year 1972 in the Barents Sea. I couldn't determine the species at once and forgot all about it for years. I recently discovered the water-colours of this specimen in my archives. Perhaps somebody could recognise the animal?
Doto sp from Kharlov Island /Barents Sea. This slender Doto - specimen 7.5 mm long when extended, was collected 11.07.1972 in the intertidal zone of Kharlov Island, Seven Islands Archipelago, 68 ° 48'N, 37 °30'E, Barents Sea. The animal was crawling among laminarian rhizoids in the shallow tidal pool; water temperature
= 8.5-9.0°C. The specimen differed from crimson Doto coronata Gmelin,1791, common for this location, in having 7 rows of elegant mustard-yellow cerata on rather thin stalks, bearing 2-4 circles of tubercles with snowy-white tips and rare crimson dots. Some cerata were absent (first left) or in the process of regeneration (6-th right and perhaps both cerata of the hinder row). The ground colour of the body was semitransparent -white with somewhat bluish hue. The characteristic red pigmentation on the back and on the upper part of the sides consisted of dark crimson spots.The dense white dots were seen on the tips of the smooth cylindrical rhinophores. The margins of white rhinophore sheaths were slightly projecting on the inner side. The white veil divides into two broad lobes. The funnel -shaped anal papilla lies between the first and the second cerata, on the line of intersection of dorsal and lateral surfaces. The genital opening is situated on the right side below the first ceratal row.
This species shares several morphological features with other greenish species of Doto including D. hydrallmaniae Morrow, Thorpe & Picton, D. tuberculata Lemche, D. lemchei Ortea and Urgorri, D. maculata Montagu, 1804, but usually disagree from each in some important characteristics. So I couldn't decide what species it was in fact? The only Doto species checked for time being in the Russian sector of Barents Sea is D. coronata.
The author of the water-colours of the live specimen of Doto, is my friend, the painter Agnessa Chekalova. My Zenith camera suddenly refused to work and though being a landscape-painter she made a rather precise portrait of the animal.
Good luck.
Irina Roginskaya.
irina7@hotmail.com
Roginskaya, I., 1999 (Dec 17) Doto from the Barents Sea. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/1638Thanks Irina,
Perhaps someone from the Northern Hemisphere
will recognise it.
Bill Rudman.
