Chromodoris fidelis - feeding

April 10, 2003
From: Kheong San Chan

Dear Bill,
On the last dive at Layang Layang, also from the shore, March 30th, we came across a fish trap with some small nudis on it. They were most probably consuming this small purple sponge on the trap. We counted 4 animals, and later found one more in the photos, just visible on the underside of the wires making up the fish-trap.

One of these nudis started away from the sponge, at first I thought he wanted to come around to the other side of the sponge, but he just kept going. These animals are small, maybe 2-3cm, so I am not sure if that is their full grown size or they are juveniles. The trap was around 5m deep.

[Layang Layang, also known as Swallows Reef, is approx 300 km northwest of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia, in the South China Sea]

Kheong

kschan@mail.dsi.nus.edu.sg

Chan, K.S., 2003 (Apr 10) Chromodoris fidelis - feeding. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/9640

Dear Kheong,
Your mystery animal is one of the colour variants of Chromodoris fidelis. It is a relatively small chromdorid, so the animals you found were probably fully grown. It certainly seems very interested in the purple sponge, which is nice confirmation for Marli Wakeling's earlier photo of another colour variant eating this purple sponge. As I say there, the sponge looks very similar to Chelonaplysilla violacea, which is the purple sponge that the red-spotted Chromodoris cf. fidelis feeds on in northern new South Wales.

Rudman, W.B., 2003 (Apr 10). Comment on Chromodoris fidelis - feeding by Kheong San Chan. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/9640

Factsheet

Chromodoris fidelis

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