Appetitive behaviour in Aplysia

August 21, 2006
From: Mark Henry

Dear Bill
Here's a picture of our old friend Aplysia. Whilst the animal demonstrates appetitive behaviour around this algae, it is not proof of a consummatory act. It is also possible that some surface, chemical aspect of this algae is palatable and the animal is checking it out. The algae looks like Corallina. Over to to you Bill what do you think?

Locality: Bridlington, 2 inches , Flamborough, England, North sea, 17 August 2006, rocky intertidal. Length: 50 mm. Photographer: Mark Henry.

Mark Henry

Mark06h@aol.com

Henry, M.S., 2006 (Aug 21) Appetitive behaviour in Aplysia. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/17503

Dear Mark,
Obviously from the other side of the world I can't say I can see what's going on in your rock pools more clearly than you. What I can say is that at times it is easy to be misled when observing feeding. I have included alongside part of one of your earlier photos because it shows the pale pink jointed calcareous coralline algae very well. It also shows the Aplysia waving around another red algae - which is certainly not a coralline.

I am afraid I can't see the dark reddish-brown algae your upper animal is interested in clearly enough to identify, but both it and the whitish clump in the middle right photo, have epiphytic soft algae growing on them which is what I suspect your Aplysia are eating. The only way to be sure is to watch them - perhaps in an aquarium for a few days. You could always kill and dissect them but that is a bit drastic, and you can still be fooled by 'bycatch' - that is bits of coralline broken off when eating epiphytic algae on the coralline. All I can say is that I have never seen Aplysia eating coralline algae and I can't recall any published reference to them eating coralline algae - but I could be wrong

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2006 (Aug 21). Comment on Appetitive behaviour in Aplysia by Mark Henry. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/17503

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